Antoine Lavoisier
| Antoine Lavoisier was a French alchemist, who played a role in development of modern chemistry (the Science Church). He was educated at Collège Mazarin. He was the mentor of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (Colonna). He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He discovered the law of conservation of mass and wrote the first list of chemical elements (later the Periodic Table of Mendeleev, abandonment of the classical 4 elements). He did research on color and experimented with combustion and the burning of sulphur and phosphorus. |  |
With Joseph Priestly he experimented with the calcination of tin and heating of the red calk of mercury to eventually isolate oxygen.
He predicted the existence of silicon, later discovered by Berzilius. He recreated the experiment of Henry Cavendish and identified hydrogen.
He worked for the Ferm-Générale as administrator of gunpowder. Jacques-Louis David painted a portrait of him.
In 1784 Louis XIV Bourbon appointed a Royal Academy of Sciences commission to investigate animal magnetism of Franz Mesmer with jesuit Sylvain Bailly, jesuit Joseph-Ignace Guillotin and Benjamin Franklin (Hellfire Club, Nine Sisters lodge in Paris).
In 1789 he wrote the Elementary Treatise on Chemistry.
During the French Revolution he was guillotined. The Duponts emigrated to the US and founded Dupont in 1802 in Delaware.
born 8/26/1743.
died 5/8/1794.
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