Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Biography

The great chemists of Antoine-Loran Lavoisier French chemist Antoine-Laran Lavoisier, by education, a lawyer, was a very rich man. He was in the "Company of Okupov" - the organization of financiers who took state taxes at the mercy. On these financial transactions, Lavoisier acquired a huge fortune. The political events that took place in France had sad consequences for Lavoisier: he was executed for working in the "general's secondary school" of a joint -stock company for the collection of taxes.

In May, among the other accused-bockeepers, Lavoisier appeared before the revolutionary tribunal and the next day was sentenced to death "as an instigator or accomplice of a conspiracy, striving to promote the success of the enemies of France by extortion and illegal requisitions from the French people." On the evening of May 8, the verdict was carried out, and France lost one of the most brilliant heads in two years Lavoisier was recognized as unfairly convicted, but this could no longer return to France a wonderful scientist.

Still studying at the University of Paris Law Faculty of Paris, the future general manager and an outstanding chemist simultaneously studied natural sciences. Lavoisier invested part of his condition in the arrangement of a chemical laboratory equipped with an excellent equipment at that time, which has become the scientific center of Paris. In his laboratory, Lavoisier conducted numerous experiments in which he determined changes in the masses of substances during their calcination and combustion.

Heating the mercury with a certain volume of air, Lavoisier received the "mercury" oxide mercury and "suffocating air" nitrogen, unsuitable for burning and breathing. Cooking mercury scale, he laid it on mercury and "life" oxygen. These and many other experiments Lavoisier showed the complexity of the composition of atmospheric air and for the first time correctly interpreted the phenomena of combustion and firing as a process of combining substances with oxygen.

The English chemist Joseph Pristley and the Swedish chemist Karl-Wilhelm Shele, as well as other natural scientists who reported the discovery of oxygen earlier, could not do this. Lavoisier proved that carbon dioxide carbon dioxide is an oxygen compound with carbon, and water is oxygen with hydrogen.

He showed on experience that when breathing, oxygen is absorbed and carbon dioxide is formed, that is, the process of breathing is similar to the combustion process. Moreover, the French chemist found that the formation of carbon dioxide during breathing is the main source of "animal heat". Lavoisier was one of the first to explain the complex physiological processes that occur in a living organism from the point of view of chemistry.

Lavoisier has become one of the founders of classical chemistry. He discovered the law of conservation of substances, introduced the concepts of “chemical element” and “chemical compound”, proved that breathing is like a combustion process and is a source of heat in the body ... Lavoisier was the author of the first classification of chemicals and the textbook “Elementary Chemistry Course”.

At 29, he was elected a full member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Who knows what other discoveries this outstanding scientist would have managed to make if the fate of the victims of revolutionary terror had not befell? ..