Marat, Jean Paul

Fortunately for a poor, would-be chemist like Leblanc, France s aristocratic passion for the physical sciences crossed economic, social, and political borders. Intellectuals such as Rousseau and Diderot cultivated the sciences with enthusiasm and compiled encyclopedias and dictionaries of natural substances. Local academies and institutes in the far-flung provinces sponsored chemical studies. Crowds flocked to hear chemists lecture and to watch their flashy laboratory demonstrations. Even the future revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, experimented with fire, electricity, and light and tried—in vain—to become a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. In America, Benjamin Franklin abandoned his printing and publishing business for physics, and in England his friend Jane Marcet wrote Mrs Marcet s Conversations in Chemistry for women and working-class men. 

Jean-Paul Marat, for one, helped bring about the chemist s execution. Marat was also a scientist, and he had been denied admission to the Academy of Science due to Lavoisier s denunciation of his experiments on combustion. It should be noted that Marat s later turn against the chemist and the academy bears elements of a personal vendetta. 

Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist who had the misfortune to live in revolutionary times, although he was no diehard loyalist. On the contrary, while not politically active, he held views that were very liberal for his day. Lavoisier died on the guillotine. In prerevolutionary days, he had been a frequent target of diatribes written by the radical leader Jean-Paul Marat. Marat, who once had scientific ambitions, believed that Lavoisier blocked his attempts to gain election to the French Academy of Sciences. Marat was assassinated before Lavoisier was executed, so he played no role in the latter s arrest or trial, but it is significant that he had constantly attacked Lavoisier for his role as a tax farmer. It was for his activities as a tax farmer that Lavoisier was executed. 

Lavoisier also made some important enemies early in his life. One of these enemies was Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793). Marat thought of himself as a scientist and applied for membership in the French Academy of Scientists. Lavoisier voted against Marat s application. He said that Marat s research was not very good. 

Although he was at heart a reformer, he was closely associated with the royal government and was a partner in the hated tax farm system. That alone would have made life difficult for Lavoisier, but he was also directly attacked by Jean Paul Marat, one of the leaders of the Terror. In the violent times,... 

Jean-Paul Marat is considered today to have been a minor scientist and was so judged by the Academie des Sciences over two centuries ago. He remains, however, famous and infamous as an impassioned and uncompromising Friend of the People —a major actor in the triumphs, excesses, and tragedies of the French Revolution. Although Marat himself was murdered on July 13, 1793, some 10 months before the execution of Lavoisier, he certainly helped to inflame passions and create the atmosphere that led the brilliant aristocrat to the guillotine on May 8,... 

C.D. Conner, Jean Paul Marat—Scientist and Revolutionary, Humanity Books, Amherst, 1998. 

P. Weiss, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade, English version By Ceoffrey Skelton, Atheneum, New York, 1965. 

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