Jones's original title comes from an apocryphal comment made by one of the judges at the execution of
Lavoisier (the tax-collector) by the guillotine.
Was
Lavoisier's science different because of the presence of his wife?
Ya en 1768 Antoine Laurent
Lavoisier refuto esta creencia de que el agua se convierte en tierra por repetidas destilaciones en recipientes de vidrio Para ello introdujo una cantidad de agua de lluvia en un recipiente cerrado llamado pelicano, un alambique que disponia de unos conductos que retornaban el vapor generado a la parte inferior, y lo calento a ebullicion durante ciento un dias.
Joseph Coquette, primer director del Tribunal de Mineria de Lima, publico en Mercurio Peruano (1792) un texto de quimica: "Principios de Quimica Fisica ...", el primer texto sobre la nueva quimica publicado en America, pues el libro de
Lavoisier (1789) en castellano fue impreso en Mexico en 1797.
The Chemical Revolution is traditionally characterized as the transition from Stahl's phlogiston theory to
Lavoisier's oxygen theory.
The mythical narration of the birth of chemistry was enriched by the figure of a founder hero (
Lavoisier), a victim of injustice, crucial events (the discovery of oxygen, the analysis and synthesis of water) and cult objects (the scale).
In his seminal study
Lavoisier -- the Crucial Year, published in 1961, the historian of science Henry Guerlac challenged the prevailing opinion that Antoine
Lavoisier was the founder of modern chemistry because it simply focused on
Lavoisier's creative genius and ignored his intellectual heritage.
Antoine-Laurent
Lavoisier effected a revolution in chemistry analogous to Newton's in physics or Darwin's in biology.
The discoveries of
Lavoisier and Priestley had undermined but not swept away pre-oxygen theories such as phlogiston and miasma as explanations of what made air breathable or not.
The book is available from
Lavoisier Publishing, 333 Meadowlands Pkwy., Secaucus, NY 07094.
He regularly employed his specimens in the course of his lectures, but he taught mineralogy as a simple display of minerals and rocks, inadequately distinguished from each other, and without reference to any of the recent advances in crystallography by Hauy and in chemistry by
Lavoisier. Sage did contribute rare mineral specimens and gems to
Lavoisier for experimentation, but then staunchly refused to accept the new chemical principles and nomenclature which
Lavoisier developed.
Lavoisier, having worked out his theory of combustion as the combination of fuels with oxygen from the air (see 1772), thought of respiration.
