New Studies on Lavoisier and the Chemical Revolution

Marco Beretta has published a profusely illustrated and broadly based account of the chemical revolution in which, while Lavoisier is the centre piece , most of those in the eighteenth century who in any way contributed to the total picture are discussed, including Priestley.187 This is one in a series on the greats of science published by the 

Italian edition of Scientific American. It makes a fascinating story and, as there is no Italian biography of Lavoisier, this is a useful artefact. Lavishly illustrated, it serves to popularize the chemical revolution, but does it truly represent its nature 188 

In another study, Fourcroy is cast as the historian of the chemical revolution, a role he fulfils admirably as he was both spectator and participant in the most important chemical events of the period.230 The importance of the language of chemistry has been stressed by Trevor Levere231 and by Pierre Laszlo.232 It has also been contended that the new chemistry contained the seeds of later structural concepts.233 This may be pushing the potential of Lavoisier s anti-phlogistic chemistry and its revised nomenclature too far, yet without all these main components, the fundamental reorganization of chemistry could not have been achieved. Fresh interest was also stimulated in Lavoisier s collaborators and contemporaries. For example, the 

While Lavoisier undoubtedly laid the foundations for the rapid rise of chemistry in the nineteenth century, his work was supported by that of other French chemists both before and after him.247 Without the Lavoisierian notion of the chemical element, it is unlikely that the chemical atomic theory and the laws of chemical combination would have been so widely accepted. However, a new perspective on the history of the concept of the chemical compound as the basis of modem chemistry suggests that it began long before Lavoisier and belongs to a different line of development involving the notion of chemical affinity .248-250 

It is perhaps not surprising that German chemists continued to think of their country as the homeland of chemistry, an outlook fostered by Lorenz Crell. By 1789, the 

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