Lavoisier, Antoine reforms

Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent. Memoire sur la necessite de reformer de perfec-tionner la nomenclature de la chimie, lu a I assemblee publique de TAcademie royale des sicences, du 18 avril 1787. 63-74 in Methode de nomenclature chimique (Paris Seuil, 1994). 

Far above Leblanc, at the very pinnacle of French science, stood Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, a government financier and reformer and the father of modern chemistry. Lavoisier was a fabulously rich tax collector. His net income hovered in modern terms somewhere between 2.4 million and 4.8 million a year, and he dedicated much of it to his scientific library and chemical laboratory. 

Antoine-Francois de Fourcroy, 1755-1809. French chemist of the Revolutionary Period. Defender of Lavoisier s views on combustion. In collaboration with Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau, and Berthollet he carried out a reform of chemical nomenclature. Fourcroy prepared and analyzed many reagents and medicinals. 

When the study of matter became more systematic, the number of known elements started to rise, from the handful of pure substances known to ancient people to the dozens recognized by the time of Antoine Lavoisier in the eighteenth century. Lavoisier and his followers reformed chemistry, partly on the basis of detailed work to clarify the definition of what an element was and partly through careful experiments to identify the characteristics of the known elements. While this work was vital, it actually complicated the situation, as the list of elements continued to grow. Most chemists felt that there had to be some system behind the existence of so many elements, but no one could... 

J. H. Brooke, A Sower Went Forth Joseph Priestley and the Ministry of Reform , in T. A. Schwartz and J. G. McEvoy (eds). Motion Towards Perfection The Achievement of Joseph Priestley (Boston, MA Skinner House Books, 1990), pp. 21-56, p. 24. A Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier Science, Administration and Revolution (Oxford Blackwell, 1993), p. 139. 

Once these difficulties had been overcome, the new theory began to gain ground. Joseph Black was an early convert, and he was teaching the antiphlogistic chemistry to his students at Edinburgh before 1784. The French chemists de Morveau, Claude Louis Berthollet (1748-1822) and Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (1755-1809) accepted the theory in 1785 or soon after, and once won over they collaborated with Lavoisier in the reform of chemical nomenclature. 

D. McKie, Antoine Lavoisier, Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer (Constable London, 1952). 

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