Lavoisier

Lavoisier, ANTOINE LAURENT, the founder of the antiphlogistic or modern chemistry, was born in Paris, on 26th August 1743, and devoted himself to scientific studies, particularly to chemistry. In order to obtain means for more fully prosecuting his investigations he accepted, in 1769, the office of farmer-general. In 1768 he was made an academician. As director of the government powder-mills, he discovered in 1776 a way of greatly improving the quality of gunpowder; and in 1791 he was appointed a commissioner of the treasury. He rendered great service in the application of chemistry to agriculture. A statement of his principal discoveries, and of the great part he played in the establishment of modern chemistry, will be found under CHEMISTRY; his discovery of oxygen was wholly independent of Priestley (see Nature, xxvii., also WATER). Lavoisier's services to science could not save him from the popular rage against farmers of the taxes during the Reign of Terror, and he died by the guillotine, 8th May 1794. His principal work is the Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (1789). His Complete Works were published in 4 vols. in 1864-68. See his Life by Grimaux (Paris, 1888); Edinburgh Review, July 1890; Berthelot, La Révolution Chimique: Lavoisier (1890).