Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743-1794), French chemist, who is considered the founder of modern chemistry . Lavoisier was born on August 26, 1743, in Paris and was educated at the Collège Mazarin. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1768. He held many public offices, including those of director of the state gunpowder works in 1776, member of a commission to establish a uniform system of weights and measures in 1790, and commissary of the treasury in 1791. He attempted to introduce reforms in the French monetary and taxation system and in farming methods. As one of the farmers-general, he was arrested and tried by the revolutionary tribunal, and guillotined on May 8, 1794. Lavoisier's experiments were among the first truly quantitative chemical experiments ever performed. He showed that, although matter changes its state in a chemical reaction, the quantity of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical reaction. These experiments provided e...