The Birth of Modern Chemistry

The stage was now set for a critical examination of phlogiston theory and the birth of modern chemistry. By the mid-... 

Knowledge on chlorophyll paralleled advances in deciphering the photosynthetic process and the birth of modern chemistry. Joseph Priestley (1733—1804) discovered, during the 1770s, that plants replenished oxygen when placed in a container filled with fixed air (carbon... 

Robert Boyle was educated in alchemy in the mid-1600s, but he published a book called The Skeptical Chemist that attacked alchemy and advocated using the scientific method. He is sometimes called the founder of modern chemistry because of his emphasis on proving a theory before accepting it, but the birth of modern chemistry is usually attributed to Lavoisier. Boyle rejected the 4 classical elements and proposed the modern definition of an element. Boyle s law states that gas volume is proportional to the reciprocal of pressure. 

Despite Robert Boyle s best efforts, the atomic theory did not become widely accepted during his lifetime. Most scientists agree that the birth of modern chemistry had to wait almost another 100 years after Boyle s death, when Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) would publish his great work, Traite Elementaire de Chimie, in 1789. Considered by many to be the founder of modern chemistry, Lavoisier carried out carefully controlled experiments, which provided real evidence for the Law of Conservation of Mass, which we covered in Lesson 1-4. 

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