Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) was a French chemist, often called “the father of modern chemistry,” who transformed chemistry into a quantitative science. Trained in law, he turned to science and insisted on precise measurement, carefully weighing the substances in every reaction. His turning point came in the 1770s, when his experiments on combustion showed that burning involves combining with a component of air, which he named oxygen, overturning the long-held phlogiston theory. He stated the principle of conservation of mass, named hydrogen, and with colleagues devised the systematic naming of chemical compounds still in use today. His Elementary Treatise on Chemistry (1789) presented an early modern list of the elements. Working closely with his wife, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, who recorded and illustrated his experiments, he also served on the commission that helped develop the metric system. He died in Paris in 1794 during the French Revolution.