AS LAVOISIER
Antoine Lavoisier describes his contributions to chemistry and science, May 8, 1794
By Jon Li
Institute for Public Science & Art
April 14, 2002
Davis California USA
My friends, thank you for joining me for this last hour. The trial was quick and final. I argued my best case as a lawyer, but the conclusion was decided weeks ago.
Before the sun goes down, I will be executed.
I have had two careers, as a government official (homme d’État) and as a scientist. I was born into a noble family, and like my father went to law school. I was a tax administrator and financier in the national government of the king. Five years ago was the beginning of new government. While I had some success in the new government, my past has caught up with me.
Ever since the King was guillotined over a year ago, it has been clear that the politics in our country was deteriorating to where this terrible day would come.
I thought about leaving France, but this is where my life is, or has been. So I have spent the last year traveling France to promote the metric system we invented.
Five months ago, they put me in jail, so I worked on my scientific memoirs.
This is my last letter, which I wrote a cousin yesterday:
I have enjoyed a reasonably long and above all a happy life and I trust my passing will be remembered with some regret and perhaps some honor. What more could I ask for? I will probably be spared the troubles of old age by the events in which I find myself embroiled. I shall die while in my prime, which I count as another of the advantages I have enjoyed. My only regret is not having done more for my family. I am sorry to have been stripped of everything and to be unable to give you and others tokens of affection and remembrance.
Evidently it is true that living according to the highest standards of society, rendering important services to one’s country, and devoting one’s life to the advancement of the arts and human knowledge is not enough to preserve one from evil consequences and dying like a criminal!
I am writing today because tomorrow I may not be allowed to do so and because I find it a comfort in these final moments to think of you and others who are dear to me. Be sure to tell those who are concerned about me that this letter is addressed to them all. It is probably the last I shall write.
I have had a very good life. When I was young, my grandmother left me a large inheritance. I invested it and worked hard. I have been a trusted national advisor on policy, especially finance and public administration. For 15 years I had the best laboratory in the world. I could afford the best craftsmen building my testing equipment to my exact specifications.
In this last hour, in the interest of science, I want to explain how I did science, so that you can better understand your own work.
First, you need to understand the world of science before 1776. Science was mostly qualitative. Objects of study were rarely measured. A priori means “without observation”.
What was called science was asserted rather than demonstrated. It mostly consisted of learning to quote accepted explanations of Aristotle’s 2000 year old belief system of the four elements of air, earth, fire and water.
What I changed was the concept of what science is. No less than my actual discoveries, it was my experimental ingenuity, exact methods and cogent reasoning that transformed what is meant by inquiry into nature. I believe in quantitative measurement. It was said that I brought my accounting skills into the laboratory, including principles of book-keeping. I developed the idea of conservation of mass, which led straight to the idea of balanced chemical equations.
Aristotle’s model explained a lot for a long time. But it no longer explained certain problems which became more important. Even the definition of the elements air, earth, fire and water was becoming confusing:
Fire: fifty years ago, a German named Stahl developed the concept of phlogiston to describe the physical thing that was released when something burst into flames. Phlogiston acted as a great unifying concept: it correlated a wide variety of facts, thus bringing a deeper understanding to all kinds of reactions. But with more accurately calibrated scales to weigh things, it became clear that some earths weigh more after they are roasted. So the idea of phlogiston was changing.
Earth: All of the earths aren’t the same. The Elements confronting Lavoisier
The Greeks knew about metals, like silver, gold, Ancient Greeks:
antimony, tin, lead, iron, mercury and copper, Silver, Gold, Copper, Tin, Lead,
and non-metals sulfur and carbon, but they decided Mercury, Iron, Carbon, Sulfur
they were special kinds of earths. But over the last 1500: Bismuth
fifty years, Swedish experimenters discovered cobalt, 1538: Zinc
nickel, manganese and molybdenum. All of these 1600: Arsenic, Antimony
seemed to be indivisible with unique and distinctive 1669: Phosphorus
properties, following Boyle’s new definition of an 1735: Cobalt
element as being a substance that is indivisible into 1740: Nickel
other components. But Aristotle’s ideas still held. 1741: Platinum
Water: The idea of water as an element was powerful, because so many things dissolved in it. But, we found that water is actually made up of two gases, and isn’t an element at all.
Air: Most people thought that all air was the same, so they just took it for granted. In 1500, Leonardo de Vinci observed that animals only breathe some of the air, but most people didn’t care.
Then, 100 years ago, John Mayow experimented with mice and candles, and
found that only part of the air was absorbed in respiration and combustion.
So maybe there is more than one kind of air.
(Picture of Mayow’s mouse)
It was air that provided evidence that Aristotle’s elements are no longer useful in trying to understand and explain nature. During the 1750s, Black did experiments which showed that a particular kind of air was produced in respiration, fermentation and combustion. So the same air results when you have a fire, when you breathe out, and when you brew beer. A candle would not burn in this kind of air. It created a precipitate in limewater. If limewater was left in an open container, it eventually formed a hardening layer along the top of the liquid of this precipitate, which meant this air was in common air. Since it was found that this air easily combined with many things, Black called it “fixed air”.
Then, his student, Rutherford, took common air, burned a candle in the air until it went out, absorbed the fixed air, and then demonstrated that the remaining air was also unique, and it was inert, and it was about 80% of the total air in the atmosphere.
Different Kinds of Airs:
Candle Combines with Dissolves Limewater
Other Substances in Water
Respirable Air Burns Sometimes Slightly
Fixed Air Not Burn Yes Significantly Precipitates
Inert Air Not Burn No — —
So, by 1770, it was clear that there were at least three kinds of air: common air that we breathe in, fixed air that we breathe out, and inert air. And as many versions of the phlogiston theory as there were chemists. Since it could be adapted to explain anything, it explained nothing.
At this point, the Englishman Joseph Priestley and I enter the picture. Priestley was a religious minister and a brilliant if scatterbrained scientific experimenter, but he still believes there is only one kind of air, so he will spend the rest of his life attacking my ideas. He was looking for goodness in air.
I will tell you something about Priestley that you can remember. He became a minister at a church that was next door to a brewery. The brewery gave off so much of this fixed air that he could do all the experiments with it he wanted to. He found it was soluble in water, and gave a pleasing tart taste. So Priestley is the father of soda pop.
During my life, I have been active in two professions, government and science. I was born into a noble family, and like my father was educated as a lawyer and devoted to my career as an administrator for the government. I invested my inheritance in the corporation (called the Ferme General) which loaned the King and his government money, in exchange for the right to collect taxes. Since the nobility and the church did not pay taxes, all of the burden fell on the peasants, so the Ferme General was hated by most people, and is the reason I am now going to the guillotine.
I was hard working in my job, traveling around France, learning more about the country than most Parisians. I became an expert on administration, finance, and the bureaucratic problems with the country. I was known as a practical problem solver: where others wish to change the status quo because it is cruelly unjust; I wish to change it because it is impractical.
(Map of France)
But I have also had a passion for science. By the time I was in college studying law, I was also attending lectures on science. My ambition was to gain fame in the Royal Academy of Science. In my early 20s, my essay for a contest by the Academy about how to efficiently light a large city was so comprehensive and well researched that they created a special medal for me and gave the prize money for the more technical papers. During this time, I was part of a geological expedition helping Guettard make a mineral atlas of France. It would eventually become 16 maps showing France’s surface features, contours, soil types and minerals.
(Picture of Lavoisier as an early investigator)
When I came back to Paris, I made a lab to analyze the composition of gypsum, and then made my first report to the Royal Academy of Science when I was only 22. Two years later, I gave a report on the densities of waters from around France. My analysis was so original that, at the early age of 25, I was made a junior member of the Royal Academy of Science. With only 54 members appointed by the King, the Academy only admitted accomplished scientists who had already established their reputations and were by definition the most distinguished in their respective fields.
To structure my investigations, I followed my curiosity to the study of Aristotle’s four elements, the science of the day.
It was believed that the element water could be transmuted into earth, since there was often a solid residue if water was boiled long enough. In 1769, I achieved fame for proving that water was not converted to earth by boiling. I performed an experiment: for 101 days, I boiled water in a device (called a “Pelican”) that condensed the water vapor and returned it to the flask to be reheated, so that no substance was permanently lost in the course of the experiment. I carefully weighed the water and the container, and found that the total system weighed the same and the residue came from the container, not the water. So water was not changed to earth by heat. This was one of the first times when an apparent observation of the Greeks was disproved by measurement and careful experiment. The results were so conclusive that they were reported in the daily Paris newspaper.
(Picture of a pelican)
(Picture of Antoine & Marie)
It is important that I tell you about my wife, Marie-Anne, whom I married in 1771. She has been my devoted collaborator. She is a linguist with a gift for English, so she has helped me in many ways. She translated important scientific English documents into French so I could understand them. In addition, she has been an assistant who took notes in my lab during my experiments, as can be seen in this picture. And she devoted herself to improving her art skills, studying under France’s most prominent painter, Jacques Louis David, so she could illustrate my scientific ideas. She is a talented artist who not only did the illustrations in my textbook but also did this drawing. She understands so much about science that she led the regular discussions at our house among some of the most prominent scientists from all over Europe. Our guests included the American ambassadors, Benjamin Franklin and then Thomas Jefferson.
(Picture of Lavoisier’s lab)
Fourcroy described these meetings: “Twice a week at his home he held gatherings to which were invited those men most distinguished in geometry, physics, and chemistry; instructive conversations, exchanges resembling those which had preceded the establishment of the academies, there became the center of all enlightenment. There were discussed the opinions of all the most enlightened men of Europe; there were read the most striking and the newest passages from works published by our neighbors; there were theories compared with experiment… I shall never in my life forget the privileged hours which I spent in those erudite exchanges where it was so pleasant for me to be admitted….Among the great advantages of those meetings, that which struck me the most and whose invaluable influence soon made itself felt in the heart of the Academy of Sciences, and subsequently all the works of physics and chemistry published for twenty years now in France, is the harmony which was established between the manner of reasoning of the geometers and that of the physicists. Precision, severity of the language, of the expressions, and of the philosophical method of the former, passed gradually into the minds of the latter.”
My wife has reported that each morning, I would rise at 6 and work at my lab until 8, then devote my daylight hours to the work of the Ferme General and the committees of the Academy, where I was usually the committee’s secretary, and wrote its report. At 7 in the evening, I would return to my lab for 3 hours. Sunday was my day of happiness, because I spent the day in the laboratory.
Soon after I was married, in 1772, along with some of my friends, I bought a diamond that we heated in a closed vessel until it disappeared. The air in the vessel turned out to be fixed air, just like comes from burned coal. It was the first clear demonstration that diamond was a form of carbon. At the end of the year, I gave the Secretary of the Academy of Science a sealed note that there were different kinds of air (some of which was absorbed by metals, increasing their weight), and it would require a revolutionary new chemistry without phlogiston.
One other thing about my career before I talk about the science of gases and how it relates to the new chemistry. In 1775, I was appointed head of the new National Gundpowder Administration to work in the Paris Arsenal, to improve the manufacture of gunpowder. This gave me the opportunity to set up a wonderful lab, and explore many practical problems, including figuring out the chemistry of gunpowder so that we could learn to produce its parts. With purer parts, we have better gunpowder and artillery that goes farther. This was only one of the practical chemistry problems that I worked on over the years.
Now, I want to explain to you Priestley’s experiment, and how I redid his experiment, and how it led me to a whole new idea of chemistry.
In 1774, Priestley came to Paris and spoke with me and a number of other scientists about a problem we were finding very perplexing: why does a metal that rusts weigh more than it did before ? When he heated rusted mercury, it became a silvery element again as it gave off a gas. This gas was not like fixed air at all. Combustibles burned more brilliantly in this gas than in air. Mice were particularly active and frisky, and could survive more than twice as long as with common air. When Priestley breathed some of this gas, he found himself feeling light and easy.
Priestley still believes very much that Aristotle is right, and there is only one kind of air. I went to my lab and repeated his experiment, and then gave up. Then, I read Priestley’s new second volume of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, and his report gave me ideas which sent me back to my lab. Please understand that Priestley is a theologian, and he is looking for good air, where I no longer believe in only one kind of air, so I am looking for an explanation for why only some air, or gases, interact with metals, while others do not.
(Picture of Priestley’s trough)
I still don’t understand why Priestley won’t accept my system. He was first to breathe this gas, which he called pure air because it made him feel so light headed, and he was the first to witness the process of photosynthesis: green plants turning fixed air into plant growth (carbon) and respirable air. He also discovered marine acid air (HCl), alkaline air (ammonia, NH3), and vitriolic acid air (SO2). Even though his six books over the years were about “different kinds of air”, he still believed in only one kind of air.
In April, 1776, at exactly the same time as Thomas Jefferson was about to draft the Declaration of Independence creating a new political ethic, and Adam Smith was publishing the Wealth of Nations to create a new economics, I saw a gas that would be the center of the new chemistry for the first time.
(Picture of apparatus for oxygen)
This air of Priestley seems to interact with metals a lot, like when an acid interacts with it, so I have called it an acid principle, or in Greek, oxygen (in German, sauerstoff). Since I was interested in the similarities between combustion and respiration, I have found that this oxygen seems to be the common factor. It makes up about 20% of the common air. Most of the rest of the air I have called azote, which is Greek for “no life”. It is the air remaining in Rutherford’s experiment, and it is part of a common ore called niter, so it will become known as nitrogen. By mixing different combinations of the two gases, I found that the mix which will support a flame about the same time as common air is about 1/5 oxygen, and 4/5 nitrogen.
Different Kinds of Airs
Candle Combines with Dissolves Limewater
Other Substances in Water
Respirable Air Burns Sometimes Slightly
Fixed Air Not Burn Yes Significantly Precipitates
Inert Air Not Burn No — —
Inflammable Air Ignites Sometimes — —
While Priestley was a brilliant experimentalist, his theoretical explanations and conclusions were fundamentally flawed because he wanted to explain those new observations in terms of phlogiston. As I stated in my 1789 Elements of Chemistry, I did other people’s experiments better than they did, and came to my own conclusions. While Priestley objected that I did not give him credit, he never understood what I meant:
“Perhaps strictly speaking there is nothing in it [that is, the discovery of the new air] of which Mr. Priestley would not be able to claim the original idea; but since the same facts have conducted us to diametrically opposite results, I trust that if I am reproached for having borrowed my proofs from the works of this celebrated philosopher, my right to the conclusions will not be contested.”
Although history makes a big deal about Priestley and my competition over the discovery of oxygen, it has been another gas which actually was the key to my developing the new chemistry.
(picture of apparatus for hydrogen)
In 1781, the British chemist Cavendish dripped water on a red hot iron. The iron rusted, and gave off a different gas that burned, so he called it inflammable air. Priestley had found that inflammable air and Priestley’s special respirable air combined when burned, and formed pure water. Cavendish’s assistant came to Paris and told me about his experiment, which I duplicated and improved upon. Since oxygen in the water made the iron rust, I concluded that inflammable air must come from the water, so I named it hydrogen, from the Greek word for water.
(picture of apparatus for water from hydrogen and oxygen)
I performed other experiments, not only producing water, but also investigating the precise action of acids on metals and the production of ‘inflammable air’. Once I demonstrated that water breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen, a lot of observed chemical reactions could be explained.
While it will turn out that I am wrong about Oxygen being the basis of acid, it will not matter for Oxygen’s importance to many other parts of the new chemistry.
So now we call the inert air Nitrogen, the inflammable air Hydrogen, the active air Oxygen and the fixed air, what shall we call it ?
During the early 1780s, my French colleagues and I developed a whole new theory-based nomenclature for elements and the compounds of combined elements. We found by measurement that, for example, fixed air was one part carbon and two parts oxygen, so we called it carbon dioxide.
Different Kinds of Airs
Candle Combines with Dissolves Limewater Modern
Other Substances in Water Names
Respirable Air Burns Sometimes Slightly Oxygen
Fixed Air Not Burn Yes Significantly Precipitates Carbon Dioxide
Inert Air Not Burn No — — Nitrogen
Inflammable Air Ignites Sometimes — — Hydrogen
The new nomenclature became the vocabulary of the language of the new chemistry. Black complained that the vocabulary forced you to accept the new theory, which he is now teaching his students.
So, we have had to give up on Aristotle’s Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Five years ago, I brought together all of our new ideas into my textbook, Elements of Chemistry which most chemistry teachers now follow. With the nomenclature as a roadway, the text made it easy for teachers to introduce the concepts and ideas to a new generation, so the chemistry has spread quickly through Europe. I identified 33 elements, which you can see from my chart. Only light and calorie turned out to be wrong.
(Lavoisier’s list of Elements on inside of the back cover)
As a member of the Academy, I was asked to study many things. My studies on behalf of the government included: the water supply of Paris, methods of working coal mines, sanitary conditions of prisons and hospitals, a new barrel design, the manufacture of starch, cesspool design, sugar manufacturing, construction of flour mills, distillation of salt water to obtain drinking water for ships at sea, fire-extinguishing liquids, methods of detecting counterfeit currency, plate-glass manufacturing, conversion of peat to charcoal, hot air balloons, bleaching, tables of specific gravity, the theory of colors, lamps, meteorites, tapestry making, paper, fossils, an invalid chair, a water-driven bellows, tartar, sulphur springs, a tobacco grater, white soap, the decomposition of nitre, the distillation of phosphorus, marble, various machines, the effects of thunder bolts, the respiration of insects, barometers, the nutrition of vegetables, and many more topics of investigation.
And, I bought a 1200 acre farm, 100 miles south of Paris near Oleans, which I turned into the first practical agricultural experimental station, weighing the actual production of my crops, so that I could improve the production of peasants for their self-sufficiency. In 1785, the King appointed me to the National Committee on Agriculture.
I sent a copy of my chemistry text to my friend Benjamin Franklin, because it changes everything that he and Thomas Jefferson think of as science (2/2/1790):
In all the treatises on chemistry published since Stahl, the writers have always begun by setting forth a hypothesis and then have striven to show that with this assumption all the phenomena of chemistry could be tolerably well explained. (a priori)
I believe, and a large number of scientists today agree with me, that the hypothesis accepted by Stahl and subsequently modified is false, that phlogiston in the sense that Stahl gave to this word does not exist, and it was chiefly to develop my ideas on this subject that I undertook the treatise that I have the honor to send to you.
I tried, as you will see in the preface, to reach the truth through the close linking up [enchaînement] of facts, to dispense with speculation as much as I could, for it is a treacherous instrument which deceives us, in order to follow as much as possible the torch of observation and experiment.
This course, which had not yet been followed in chemistry, led me to plan my book according to an absolutely new scheme, and chemistry has been brought much closer than heretofore to experimental physics. I very much hope that your leisure and your health will allow you to read the first chapters of it, since your approval, and that of a few European scientists who are without prejudice in these sorts of matters, is all that I desire.
It seems to me that chemistry presented in this way has become infinitely easier to learn than it was before. Young people whose heads are not filled with any system grasp it eagerly, whereas older chemists still reject it, and most of them find it more difficult to grasp and to understand than those who have not yet studied any chemistry.
French chemists are at present divided between the old doctrine and the new. I have on my side M. de Morveau, M. Berthollet, M. de Fourcroy, M. de la Place, M. Monge, and in general the physicists of the Academy. The scientists in London and of England also very gradually abandon Stahl’s doctrine, but the German chemists still cling to it. So here we have a revolution that has taken place in an important area of human knowledge since your departure from Europe. I shall hold this revolution to be well advanced and even completed if you will line up with us…..
Neither a Radical nor a Reactionary:
….After having held forth to you about what is happening in chemistry, I should say something about our political revolution. We look upon it as achieved irreversibly. Nevertheless there still exists an aristocratic party which makes futile efforts and which is evidently very weak; the democratic party has on its side the greatest number and in addition education, philosophy and enlightenment. The moderates, who have kept their heads in this general turmoil, think that circumstances have carried us too far, that it is unfortunate to have been obliged to arm the common people and all the citizens; that it is ill advised to place force in the hands of those who should obey, into the hands of the very people from whom it is to be feared that the setting up of a new constitution will meet with obstruction on account of what it has established…..
Politically, even though I was nobility, I was a liberal advocate for improvements in society, and actively supported the Revolution.
I was elected to the Paris Commune, and served my turn in the National Guard. I was active in the regional assembly in Orleans. And, I became even more active in the struggling national government, trying to save the finances. In the new government, I was appointed to several committees, where I was habitually the secretary.
During the first year of the Revolution, I continued to concentrate on the financial and administrative problems of making the new government work. I have remained a loyal, hard-working citizen with many talents for administration whose main concern is to contribute to the public good.
I completed a comprehensive report of how to improve the French national economy, but my reforms were ignored.
I was appointed to the national commission to secure the uniformity of weights and measures. We invented the metric system. I tried to use its obvious patriotic benefit to protect the Academy of Science.
But things became increasingly ugly. I was attacked in the popular press. I was evicted from the Paris Arsenal that had been my home and laboratory for 15 years. The Academy of Science was disbanded, along with other national groups that had served the King.
Then the Reign of Terror began. The King was arrested and then executed, followed by his wife. Then in December, I was arrested with the others who ran the tax system. Like thousands of others, we were given a phony trial and then sentenced to death.
In conclusion, these are my accomplishments:
- I established the scientific method of analysis based on empirical measurement that is quantitative, and not just qualitative;
- I invented the law of conservation of mass, and balanced equations
- I established the definition of a chemical element as any substance that cannot be broken down into simpler substances, and the qualitative description of each of the 33 chemical elements.
- with several colleagues, I developed what we call the nomenclature, the systematic naming of compounds based on the elements
- I did the founding work on chemical heat transfer that will be known as thermodynamics;
- I named oxygen and hydrogen as the gases that make up water
- I conceived the oxygen theory of combustion to replace Aristotle’s air and fire;
- I established that vegetable matter contains carbon, hydrogen and oxygen;
- I wrote the first textbook of chemistry as we know it; and,
- I was a member of the committee that developed the metric system.
Some thoughts about the future:
I will be executed fourth. My father-in-law will be third. Our bodies will be dumped in unmarked graves.
My wife Marie will grieve our deaths. She will devote the next ten years to publishing a few copies of my memoirs. She will continue to hold scientific salons that are well attended, and will be known for her intellectual toughness.
In 200 years, when chemists speak of my work, they will point out that I have made three mistakes:
• Oxygen is not really the source of acid activity, so it is misnamed;
• Heat or caloric is not an element
• Light is not an element
On all other major points, chemists in the future will fundamentally agree with me, which is why I am the Father of Chemistry.
Dalton will advance the idea of an atom, which gives structure to the idea of elements.
During the next half century, a total of 57 elements will become identified, based on my methods.
Chemists will advance my carbohydrate idea with the construction of urea, the first chemical synthesis to duplicate an organic compound of nature in the laboratory, which was the beginning of biochemistry.
And everywhere in the scientific world but America will rely on the metric system, and define heat by the unit of a calorie: the heat necessary to convert one cubic centimeter of water from a solid to a liquid.
Thank you for letting me explain to you my place in the history of science.
Now I must go.
Bibliography
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
A Short History of Chemistry, Isaac Asimov
Man Masters Nature: 25 Centuries of Science, edited by Roy Porter:
Joseph Priestley: Science, Religion and Politics in the Age of Revolution, John Christie
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: The Chemical Revolution, Maurice Crosland
Great Scientific Experiments: A.L. Lavoisier: The Proof of the Oxygen Hypothesis
Science: Its History and Development Among the World’s Cultures
Joseph Priestley Scientist, Theologian, and Metaphysician: Priestley & Lavoisier, Aaron Ihde
Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent, ![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
http://phys.suwon.ac.kr/~kdh/sct/lavoi.htm http://www.biochem.wsu.edu/phs298: Black, Priestley, Lavoisier
Encyclopedia Britannica: Lavoisier, Priestley, chemistry, combustion, elements, fermentation
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: Chemist and Revolutionary, Henry Guerlac
Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration & Revolution, Arthur Donovan
The Cautionary Scientists: Priestley, Lavoisier, and the founding of modern chemistry, Kenneth Davis
From Caveman to Chemist: Circumstances and Achievements, Hugh W. Salzberg
Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements, Paul Strathern
The Discovery of the Elements, Willy Ley
Antoine Lavoisier: Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer, Douglas McKie
Creations of Fire: Chemistry’s Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age, Cathy Cobb, Harold Goldwhite
Antoine Lavoisier: Founder of Modern Chemistry, Lisa Yount
The Chemist Who Lost His Head: The Story of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Vivian Grey
The Story of Oxygen, Karen Fitzgerald
Jon Li’s interest in the history of science began in the 8th grade when he read Isaac Asimov’s Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. Jon was introduced to the story of Lavoisier & Priestley in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He is interested in Lavoisier’s story of the invention of the oxygen theory of combustion because it happened in 1776, when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith was publishing The Wealth of Nations. This was the year of the Age of Enlightenment, a transformation in consciousness as significant as Copernicus, Columbus and the artistic renaissance of 1500. Jon studied economics and political science at UCD, and he believes the next paradigm shift is a computer-enabled transformation from static to dynamic models of social systems, based on biology, with the emphasis shifting from national to global/regional/local through the Internet.
