Paulze

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and his wife Marie-Anne Pierrette, nee Paulze, the father figure (joined by a mother figure) of modem chemistry. Painted in 1788 by Jacques-Louis David. 

In 1771, Lavoisier married the fourteen year old daughter of M. Paulze, a wealthy member of the Ferme, though not so wealthy as was Lavoisier himself. His marriage seems to have been a happy one, and during all his later scientific work his wife was a zealous and able assistant in his laboratory and in his writing. After his death, also, she edited and published much of his scientific work. 

Academicians who had not abandoned their elitist views and wholeheartedly joined the people were now in danger. The Reign of Terror fully radicalized the Revolution, and Lavoisier, Paulze, and 26 other members of the Ferme Generale were guillotined over the course of 35 minutes on May 8, 1794. ... 

SEE Marie Paulze-Lavoisier Scald Rumford s Flowers ... 

Fig. 2.1 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) with his wife and secretary Marie-Anne Paulze (1758-1835), Painting by Louis David...

Talented though he was, Lavoisier, like other scientists of the time, had to finance his own experiments. In an effort to achieve financial security, he made one of the best and one of the worst moves of his life He used his inheritance from his mother to purchase membership in a tax-collecting firm. Why this was one of his worst moves, we shall presently see. It was one of his best moves because he met Jacques Paulze, another tax collector, and his 13-year-old daughter, Marie. Marie Paulze was to became Lavoisier s wife before she turned 14. 

Educated in a convent since the death of her mother when Marie was 3 years old, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier had talent in both art and languages. She must also have had some innate proclivity for science, because she immediately became involved in Lavoisier s scientific work translating scientific papers, working in the laboratory, keeping laboratory notebooks, and making illustrations of experimental setups. Lavoisier, now well settled, well financed, and well assisted, started on what was to be his most important work to use the principle of the conservation of mass to revolutionize chemistry. 

The last to discover oxygen was Lavoisier, who is shown in Figure 5.R.2 together with his wife-assistant Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, who was a remarkable young woman, many years younger than Lavoisier, and who functioned as his scientific assistant. The play Oxygen even implies that she shared in his discovery. Lavoisier used to work with closed vessels and weigh the materials before and after the reaction. In this manner, he was able to substantiate the law of the conservation of mass. 

Figure 7. Lavoisier s gazometer, designed by the engineer Jean-Baptiste Meusnier and drawn by Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier. It allowed the measurement of the we ht of a gas consumed in a reaction. This large, expensive piece of apparatus performed an essential role in the experimental demonstration of the synthesis of water. Plate from Lavoisier s Elements of Chemistry, 1789, image courtesy of the Service Interetablissements de Cooperation Documentaire des Universites de Strasbourg Departement du Patrimoine (the book is available in digital form on the website of the university s library).

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