Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier is considered the creator of modern chemistry, for his studies and contributions that to this day are still useful for science, such as his studies on photosynthesis, combustion, the law of conservation of mass, caloric theory, animal respiration among many others.
He was a biologist chemist and in turn a renowned French economist of his time, who initially pursued a law degree, to later find his passion in the natural sciences, which were what made him known, as the forerunner of chemistry. modern.
He obtained several recognitions, among which the lunar crater Lavoisier, which bears his name in commemoration, and asteroid 6826 that also bears his name, and this is also reflected among the 72 names of scientists in the famous Eiffel Tower.
He had several important book publications such as the method of chemical nomenclature in the year 1787, which was considered as the new method of nomenclature, due to its great contributions.
He also changed the way of thinking of some elements in chemical matters, such as water, which everyone thought was an element, but he showed that it is a compound.
Biography of Antoine Lavoisier
Before knowing what were the most important contributions of Lavoisier, it is necessary to have a notion of how he got to them, who lived and in turn led him down that path.
Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, born on August 26, 1743 in Paris / France, was considered the founder of modern chemistry, because he consolidated it, thanks to this he was considered one of those involved in the scientific revolution, and his great discoveries and findings.
At the young age of 11 he began to study at the elite school, the College of the Four Nations, in 1754, being one of the best students of natural sciences, due to his natural gifts, but at the same time he studied law, since his father was an important lawyer of the time, and he asked for it.
At 28 years of age he decided to marry Miss Marie Ann Pierrette Paulze, daughter of an important co-owner of the ferme genérale, which was the government concession for tax collection, in which Lavoisier was working, this was in the year 1771.
He held very important positions throughout his life, he was a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1768, state director of the works for the creation of gunpowder in 1776, in 1789 he was part of a commission to establish a uniform system of weights, and in In 1791 he was commissioner of the treasury, which led him to try to introduce some reforms to the monetary and tax systems of Paris, as well as to the methods of agricultural production.
In the year 1793 in his position as commissioner of the treasury, he worked in the collection of contributions, so the current government decides to arrest him, at the same time, all his acquaintances tried to help him by showing their contributions throughout his career, but the law did not he could stop simply for dealing with a scientist, so in the following year 1794, he was sentenced to the guillotine, dying beheaded before the government.
In 1795 a new French government emerged, which after some investigations recognized that Antoine Lavoisier had been executed, after a totally false sentence, for which they sent the now widow Marie Ann a letter explaining what happened.
Most important Lavoisier contributions
Lavoisier was a great biologist chemist of his time, even one of the most relevant in terms of chemical research, who had contributions that changed the way of thinking of many scientists, that even today his discoveries are still totally necessary to the development of this science.
Among the most relevant contributions of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier are the following:
Lomonosov-Lavoisier law
Better known as the law of conservation of mass, one of the most important laws ever discovered for the natural sciences, mainly elaborated by Mr Mikhail Lomonosov in 1748 and then completed by Antoine Lavoisier in 1785.
The consumed mass of the reactants is equal to the mass obtained from the products, this means that in an ordinary chemical reaction the mass remains constant, so it does not change, with a small exception with nuclear reactions in which the mass it is usually minimally modified.
Combustion theory
Combustion was one of the main problems of chemistry back then, because it was believed that when combustion, the components released phlogiston, to which Lavoisier with an arduous investigation of them, realized that the most important element to the time to make a combustion was the air, which was a compound of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen.
Proponents of the phlogiston theory believed that by calcining a metal, it obtained a greater weight, because they had obtained phlogiston in them, but Lavoisier proved the opposite by heating a metal in a closed container, weighing it before and after the process.
Animal respiration
This was one of Lavoisier's contributions that caused the most controversy among scientists, because he proposed that the air that was inhaled was burned in the lungs and then left as carbon dioxide, rhetorically of course.
To verify this, he locked a guinea pig in a container with oxygen, and began to measure the amounts of oxygen it consumed, and the amounts of carbon dioxide it produced. This discovery was crucial for the study of the relationship between plants and animals, and in turn to determine the amount of oxygen consumed in physical activity, and in a state of rest.
The caloric theory
With the intense research that led to the combustion experiments carried out by Lavoisier, it was also possible to notice the presence of caloric particles at the time of carrying it out, which is why it was determined that even the act of breathing is a heat-producing agent.
Then he verified that all matter related to heat does not have or effect a change in its weight or mass, this could be noticed when lighting a match and realizing that there was no change in it, after being lit .
Water as a compound
Before Lavoisier determined that water was a compound between hydrogen and oxygen, it was believed that water was an element, because the necessary studies had not been carried out on it, thus verifying that it is made up of 85% of oxygen and only 15% hydrogen.
This contribution by Lavoisier totally changed the way of looking at water, since it was previously believed that it was a simple substance, so he showed that it was composed of two of these.
Contribution to photosynthesis
Thanks to his combustion studies, it was possible to determine that the oxidation of oxygen in food produced fixed air better known as carbon dioxide, which was the substance that plants used to carry out their respiration process, this was from the year 1772.
The first chemistry book
He was the author of the first chemistry textbook, expressing in his work everything related to this science, the most current and most relevant data, the experiments and their effects, the nomenclatures of the elements, their composition, among many other things.
Periodic table of chemistry
Lavoisier created a list of the elements and how they were composed, thus generating modern chemistry, due to all the information that it gave to matter, he defined them as substances which cannot be decomposed, these being the most basic.
This contribution from Lavoisier continues to be used today, even taught in schools, so that students have an easier handling of what chemistry encompasses.
Metric system
I work in conjunction with several mathematicians, who gave rise to the metric system of measurement, in the French Academy of Sciences, which managed to record a uniformity in terms of measurements in all areas in France, which later spread throughout the world.
There were many contributions by Lavoisier, all of them very important and relevant to the history of science and the study of nature, all of which he achieved thanks to his great intellectual gifts and his hard work throughout his life.
He managed to change the world of chemistry to a degree that his methods, which are more than 100 years old, are still being used today.
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