Antoine Lavoisier

Paper instructions:
Choose a famous chemist (living or non-living) and write a two-page essay describing the life and work of the chemist. Your essay should include the following:

Explain why you chose this chemist

Provide a brief history of the chemist’s life (when they were born, their childhood, education, etc)

What made this chemist famous? What was their impact on the field of chemistry?

A bibliography (a reference list containing only Wikipedia is strongly discouraged)

The essay should be 12 pt font and double spaced, and write in MLA writing style.

Reason for choosing Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier transformed chemistry to a large extent. Lavoisier named elements such as carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. He also discovered the role of oxygen in respiration and combustion. He found out that water is a compound, which is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Lavoisier established that sulfur is an element, and revolutionized chemistry from qualitative science to quantitative science (Goedecke, par. 2, and par. 3). For these reasons, studying his life and work is interesting. 

History of Antoine Lavoisier

Lavoisier was born on 26^th August 1943 in Paris, the capital city of France. His mother passed on when he was five years old, leaving him in wealth, which his mother generated from butchery business. Moreover, Lavoisier’s father was practicing law in Paris parliament (Goedecke, par. 1). He pursued his education at College des Quatre-Nations, a branch campus of University of Paris (Goedecke, par. 1). In the last two years of his study at the college, he pursued sciences. Even though he was interested in sciences, at the age of 18 years, he joined law school to pursue law. He reached this decision after his father told him that science was a hobby, not a serious profession. He studied law for two years and was awarded a bachelor's degree in law.

A year after graduation, he acquired a license to practice law, but did not practice law thereafter. When studying for his law degree, Lavoisier was still interested in science. As a result, he attended science classes in addition to his law classes. He published his first science paper the same year he acquired a law license. In the same year, he also read a scientific paper to the top French Academy of Science (Goedecke, par. 1). 

What made Lavoisier Famous?

The discovery of carbon forms and naming carbon is one of Lavoisier’s works that made him famous. In 1772, Lavoisier and other colleagues purchased a diamond and put it in a sealed jar. They then magnified the sun's rays on this diamond. Surprisingly, the diamond burned and vanished. Lavoisier found out that the weight of the jar did not change after the disappearance of the diamond. The observation enabled him to justify the law of mass conservation. He realized that burning charcoal or diamond generated the same gas that is today referred to as carbon (IV) oxide. He concluded that diamond and charcoal are distinctive forms of the same element, which he named carbon. 

The understanding of oxygen and combustion is another famous work of Lavoisier. In 1772, people did not understand the concept of the burning process. Fortunately, it was until the sulfur or phosphorus burning discovery of Lavoisier in 1772 when people grasped the concept of the burning process (Arthur, 351). Lavoisier noted that burning either sulfur or phosphorus produces acidic products. He also found out that the products weighed more than the original Sulphur or phosphorus, implying that phosphorus or sulfur combined with a certain unknown substance in the air to generate acid products.

The identification of this substance became intense when Joseph Priestley came to Paris and briefed Lavoisier about the gas that is released during the decomposition of mercury oxide (Goedecke, par. 4). The information encouraged Lavoisier to research more about the substance. In 1779, he named the substance oxygen and discovered that its presence in the air was about 20%, and was responsible for combustion and respiration (West, L775). As a result of this discovery, he concluded that oxygen combined with sulfur or phosphorus burned in air to form sulfur oxide or phosphorus oxide.

Works Cited

Arthur, Donovan. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution. Blackwell Science Biographies. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, 1993, 351.

Goedecke, Catharina. 225^th anniversary: death of Antoine Lavoisier. Wiley Online Library, 2019. DOI: 10.1002/chemv.201900047.

West B. John. “The collaboration of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier and the first measurement of human oxygen consumption.” Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol, 305, 2013, L775-L785. DOI:10.1152/ajplung.00228.2013.