When in 1869 Adolph Wurtz claimed that “Chemistry is a French science; it was founded by Lavoisier of immortal fame” he doubtless indulged in chauvinistic exaggeration, for sciences are stateless and few single persons bring about revolutions, be they political or intellectual. Nonetheless there is much truth in the second part of Wurtz’s claim, for Antoine Lavoisier was primus inter pares in effecting the transformation of a chaotic collection of qualitative facts and the fluctuating interpretations of the vague phlogistic theory into something resembling the quantitative macroscopic chemistry of today. There is an additional irony in that shortly after the triumph of the chemical revolution that he had masterminded he was to fall victim to the political revolution that he had tried hard to ignore.

Born the son of a nouveau riche lawyer and educated at the College Mazarin, Antoine Lavoisier was expected to enter the legal profession, receiving his baccalaureate in law in 1763. However, the influence of several eminent teachers persuaded him to pursue astronomical, botanical, geological, and finally chemico-physical studies. His great achievement was the establishment of the centrality of oxygen to an understanding of the phenomena of combustion, calcination, respiration, and, less securely, acidity. To advance his views he collaborated with several French colleagues on a new Methode de Nomenclature Chimique. Two years later he alone was to author the Traite Elementaire de Chimie, the foundation document of modern chemistry.

Lavoisier was a polymath who wrote on physiology, economics and scientific agriculture. On his marriage he had also become a member of the feared and reviled Ferme Generale, a privatized organization empowered by the French government to collect taxes. It was this that led to Madame Lavoisier being simultaneously widowed and orphaned by the guillotine on the morning of April 8, 1794.

References
DSB, Vol. VIII, pp. 66-91.
A. Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

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