Knowra Antoine Lavoisier Antoine Lavoisier Antoine Lavoisier was an eighteenth-century French chemist who helped establish modern chemistry through quantitative experiments, chemical nomenclature, and an oxygen-based account of combustion.
Law of Conservation of Mass : In a closed system, total mass remains constant during a chemical or physical change. Lavoisier’s precise weighing experiments helped establish this principle as a foundation of chemistry.
Oxygen Theory of Combustion : The explanation that combustion involves a substance combining chemically with oxygen. Lavoisier used this account to replace phlogiston explanations of burning.
Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier : A French chemist, illustrator, and translator who collaborated with Antoine Lavoisier and helped communicate his work. She translated scientific texts, illustrated experiments, and contributed to the presentation of his research.
Robert Boyle : An Anglo-Irish natural philosopher whose experimental work helped shape modern chemistry and the concept of elements. Boyle’s emphasis on experiment and his critique of traditional elements preceded Lavoisier’s reforms.
Chemical Revolution : The eighteenth-century transformation that replaced older chemical frameworks with quantitative, oxygen-based chemistry. Lavoisier’s experiments and theories became central to this shift.
Combustion : A chemical reaction, usually rapid, in which a substance reacts with an oxidant and releases energy. Lavoisier’s experiments recast burning as a reaction involving oxygen.
Joseph Priestley : An English natural philosopher and chemist who isolated several gases, including oxygen, which he called dephlogisticated air. His gas experiments informed Lavoisier’s interpretation of combustion, though the two explained them differently.
Joseph Black : A Scottish chemist who identified carbon dioxide as a distinct gas and studied latent heat. His work on gases helped establish experimental approaches that Lavoisier later extended.
Phlogiston Theory : An eighteenth-century theory that explained combustion through the release of a fire-like substance called phlogiston. Lavoisier’s oxygen theory challenged this influential account of combustion.
Oxygen : A chemical element with atomic number 8 that supports many oxidation reactions and is a major component of air. Lavoisier identified oxygen’s role in combustion and helped establish its modern chemical account.
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