Father of Chemistry Overview
Chemistry is the study of matter, which is defined as everything having mass and occupied space, and the changes that it may undergo when subjected to diverse environments and situations. Chemistry is not only used in scientific investigations but it is also used in everyday life. It represents the advancement of civilization and humanity. The everyday task involves a certain amount of chemistry and is vital in numerous areas, including health, agriculture, and engineering.
Father of Chemistry Early Years
Antoine Lavoisier [Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier] was a French scientist who lived from August 26, 1743 to May 8, 1794. Lavoisier, known as the "Father of Modern Chemistry," was a French aristocrat who played an important role in the history of chemistry and biology. He was the first person to successfully determine the composition of water and successfully synthesize the chemical from its parts in 1783. Lavoisier invented the terms "oxygen" in 1778 and "hydrogen" in 1783, and he anticipated the existence of silicon in 1778. He contributed to the development of the metric system, compiled the first comprehensive list of elements, and helped to reorganize chemical nomenclature. Lavoisier was also the first to prove that sulphur was an element rather than a compound (1777).
As the son of a rich Parisian lawyer, he followed in his father's footsteps and studied law. His mother, Émilie Punctis, was the heir of a butcher shop. When she died at the age of five, she left a sizable inheritance to her son. Despite his legal degree, his primary interest was science, which he pursued with zest while working a demanding public schedule. He was elected to France's most prestigious scientific body, the Academy of Sciences, at the age of 25 in 1768, based on his early scientific achievements, notably in geology. For many years, he was also the commissioner of the French Gunpowder Commission. He married Marie-Anne Pierrette Paul, the daughter of another tax farmer, when she was just 14 years old, a few years later. Madame Lavoisier studied art and etching as she prepared to be Antoine-scientific Laurent's scientific collaborator. She made major contributions to his studies by learning English, translating the writings of British scientists such as Joseph Priestley, and painting illustrations for his scientific articles.
Read more about the recent updated Article on How to Become a Scientist in India?
Father of Chemistry Childhood and Education
Lavoisier was the only son and first child of a rich bourgeois family in Paris. As a child, he was unusually studious and concerned about public welfare. He studied law after being exposed to the humanities and sciences at the famous Collège Mazarin. He was able to spend most of his three years as a law student attending public and private lectures on chemistry and physics and working under the supervision of famous naturalists since the Paris law faculty put little expectations on its students. Following the completion of his legal studies, Lavoisier, like his father and maternal grandfather before him, was admitted to the prestigious Order of Barristers, members of which brought matters before the High Court (Parlement) of France. Instead of practicing law, Lavoisier began conducting a scientific study, which earned him admittance to France's finest natural philosophy club, the Academy of Sciences in Paris, in 1768.
Father of Chemistry Periodic Organization
In 1789, physicist Antoine Lavoisier attempted to classify elements as metals or nonmetals. A German scientist observed parallels in the physical and molecular properties of particular elements 40 years later. He called them triads after discovering that numerous features of the middle element, such as atomic weight and density, were close to the average value of these traits in the other two elements in each triad. A watershed moment came in 1860, with the publication of a new list of elements and their atomic weights at the first international chemistry conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. They arrived at the conclusion that hydrogen should have an atomic weight of one and that the atomic weights of other elements should be calculated by comparing them to hydrogen.
Read more about Siegmund Gabriel, Mole Fraction, and Named Reactions.
The Chemistry of Pneumatics
As a student, Lavoisier studied chemistry, which was not known for its conceptual clarity or theoretical rigor. Although chemical texts provided a wealth of information on the substances investigated by chemists, there was no agreement on the precise composition of chemical elements or on explanations for changes in composition. Many natural philosophers continued to see the four elements of Greek natural philosophy—earth, air, fire, and water—as the essential constituents of all matter. Chemists such as Lavoisier concentrated their efforts on examining "mixes" (i.e., compounds), such as the salts created when acids and alkalis interact.
Stephen Hales, an English priest, and natural philosopher, established in the 1720s that atmospheric air loses its "spring" (i.e., elasticity) when it becomes "fixed" in solids and liquids. Perhaps the air was merely a vapor like steam, and its spring, rather than being a fundamental quality of the element, was formed by heat, according to Hales. Hales investigations were a significant initial step in the experimental study of particular air or gases, which became known as pneumatic chemistry.
Read more about the Electropositive Elements and Decantation.
What were Antoine Lavoisier's achievements?
Antoine Lavoisier discovered that oxygen was an important ingredient in combustion and named the element after himself. He invented the present method of identifying chemical compounds and is known as the "Father of Modern Chemistry" because of his emphasis on rigorous testing.
Read more about the Displacement Reaction Definition, Types of Hybridization, and SI Unit of Displacement.
Marie-Anne Lavoisier, who was she?
In 1771, Marie-Anne Paulze married Antoine Lavoisier. She helped Antoine with his experiments. She drew the illustrations for many of his works and translated them from English for him because he didn't speak them.
Related Articles-
Combustion Theory
When elements interact with anything in the air, they gain weight, as Antoine Lavoisier observed. In 1774, Joseph Priestley, a British chemist, extracted a component of air by heating mercury calx (oxide). He believed it was pure air since it facilitated respiration and combustion so well. Priestly invented the term "dephlogisticated air," claiming that its unique properties were due to a lack of phlogiston.
Lavoisier repeated the experiment with mercury and other metal oxides after informing him of his discovery. He realized that air contained two components: one that connected with the metal and allowed for breathing, and one that did not. In 1778, Lavoisier proposed a new theory of combustion, describing it as the interaction of metal or organic material with the "eminently respirable" component of common air. The next year, he coined the name "oxygen," which is derived from Greek terms that mean "acid generator." Lavoisier's discovery of the function of oxygen in combustion is considered one of his most significant accomplishments.
Read more about Formal Charge Formula.
Sulphur
In 1772, Antoine Lavoisier and his chemists placed a diamond in a jar and used a huge magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays on it. The diamond was engulfed by fire and burned away. According to Lavoisier, when diamonds or charcoal are burnt, neither produces water nor emits the same amount of carbon dioxide per gram. As a result, he determined that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon, coining the term "chemical allotropy." In 1787, Lavoisier proposed that silica was an oxide of a fundamental chemical element, thereby predicting the discovery of silicon.
Read more about the Difference Between Electrophile and Nucleophile.
The First Modern Chemistry Textbook
Antoine Lavoisier's most famous work, Traité élémentaire de chimie, was published in 1789. The results supported Lavoisier's oxygen hypothesis of combustion while ruling out the presence of phlogiston. It defines an element as a single material that cannot be chemically broken down and serves as the basis for all chemical compounds. It included an element list, which served as the foundation for the present element list. The results were backed by Lavoisier's oxygen combustion theory and ruled out the presence of phlogiston. It defines an element as a single material that cannot be chemically broken down and serves as the basis for all chemical compounds. It contained an element list, which served as the basis for today's element list.
Related Articles-
The Law of Mass Conservation
Antoine Lavoisier developed the Law of Conservation of Mass in 1789 after discovering that mass is never generated or destroyed in chemical interactions. According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, the matter may be transformed from one form to another, mixtures can be separated or created, and pure substances can be dissolved, but the overall amount of mass stays constant. The Law of Conservation of Mass may be used to solve for unknown masses, such as the quantity of gas consumed or created during a reaction, and is useful for a variety of computations.
As a result, atoms are not changed into other elements during chemical reactions in the ordinary world of Earth, from the summit of the tallest mountain to the depths of the deepest ocean. Living creatures are composed mostly of six elements-
- Oxygen
- Carbon
- Calcium
- Nitrogen
- Phosphorus
- Hydrogen
Read more about the- Highest Salary Courses after 12th Science and the Difference Between Molarity and Molality.
Water
Antoine Lavoisier named the gas that Henry Cavendish identified as a new element in 1766 "hydrogen" in 1783. Cavendish gave the combustible material the name air. In 1783, Lavoisier performed a series of tests on water composition with the help of French mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace. The two used hydrogen and oxygen jets in a bell jar over mercury to create "water in a highly pure condition." Water was demonstrated to be a combination of two gases, hydrogen, and oxygen, rather than an element, based on quantitative evidence. Everyone has considered water to be an element since Aristotle included it in his four elements over 2,000 years ago, and this was an important finding. Water's interpretation as a compound explained the reduction of oxides by inflammable air (hydrogen) created by dissolving metals in acids.
Related Articles-
Death and Philosophy
When the French Revolution occurred in 1789, Lavoisier, like many other philosophically-minded managers, saw it as an opportunity to rationalize and improve the nation's politics and economy by reducing oxides of inflammable air (hydrogen) generated by dissolving metals in acids, and the inflammable air was explained by water's interpretation as a cause. On the other hand, upheavals swiftly shattered such faith, threatening the state's very survival. Lavoisier continued to counsel Revolutionary administrations on finance and other subjects, maybe overestimating science's authority and the force of reason. When popular fury erupted against individuals who possessed authority and enjoyed social benefits during the former administration, he and his wife did not move abroad.
As the Revolution got more extreme and those in power were forced to govern by fear, Lavoisier continued to advocate that the Academy of Sciences should be spared. When this last-ditch attempt failed, he was instantly imprisoned alongside other members of the General Farm. The Republic's royalist past was being erased. In May 1794, Lavoisier, his father-in-law, and 26 other tax farmers were hanged. "It took them barely a second to remove that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it," a contemporary, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, said, recognizing Lavoisier's scientific significance.