Paulze, Marie-Anne-Pierrette,

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. 

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. 

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