Antoine Lavoisier

Introduction & Top Questions
Early life and education
Pneumatic chemistry
Conservation of mass
Phlogiston theory
Marriage and administrative career
Oxygen theory of combustion
The chemical revolution
The French Revolution and Lavoisier’s execution

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Portrait of French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, shown in formal 18th-century attire with a white wig and ruffled cravat, looking slightly to his left.

Engraving of Antoine Lavoisier in eighteenth-century attire observing a laboratory experiment with glassware and scientific equipment on a table.

Ernest Board: Lavoisier Explaining to His Wife the Result of His Experiments on Air

At a Glance

Antoine Lavoisier summary

Quizzes

Model of a molecule. Atom, Biology, Molecular Structure, Science, Science and Technology. Homepage 2010 arts and entertainment, history and society

Science Quiz

Michael Faraday (L) English physicist and chemist (electromagnetism) and John Frederic Daniell (R) British chemist and meteorologist who invented the Daniell cell.

Faces of Science

Know Your Chemistry Quiz

Illustration of molecules. (molecular, chemistry, science)

So Much Chemistry, So Little Time Quiz

Related Questions

How did Antoine Lavoisier contribute to the development of the metric system?
How did Antoine Lavoisier contribute to the modern naming of chemical substances?
How did Antoine Lavoisier define a chemical element?
How did Antoine Lavoisier explain calcination?
How did Antoine Lavoisier explain combustion?
How did Antoine Lavoisier explain the increase in weight when metals rust?
How did Antoine Lavoisier help show that water is made from oxygen and hydrogen?
How did Antoine Lavoisier show that air is a mixture of gases?
How did Antoine Lavoisier use precise measurements in chemical experiments?
How did Antoine Lavoisier’s chemical revolution change scientific methods?
How did Antoine Lavoisier’s ideas differ from Georg Ernst Stahl’s phlogiston theory?
How did Antoine Lavoisier’s oxygen theory replace the phlogiston theory?
How did Joseph Priestley’s oxygen experiments influence Antoine Lavoisier?
How did Marie-Anne Lavoisier document laboratory equipment and experiments?
How did Marie-Anne Paulze assist Antoine Lavoisier’s scientific work?
How did the French Revolution affect Antoine Lavoisier?
How was Antoine Lavoisier educated?
What did Antoine Lavoisier call carbon dioxide?
What did Joseph-Louis Lagrange say after Antoine Lavoisier was executed?
What names did Antoine Lavoisier give to oxygen and nitrogen?
What role did Antoine Lavoisier have in the French Gunpowder Administration?
What role did oxygen play in Antoine Lavoisier’s theory of combustion?
What was Antoine Lavoisier’s Elementary Treatise on Chemistry about?
What were Antoine Lavoisier’s major contributions to chemistry?
When and how did Antoine Lavoisier die?
When and where was Antoine Lavoisier born?
When did Antoine Lavoisier join the French Academy of Sciences?
When did Antoine Lavoisier marry Marie-Anne Paulze?
When did Joseph Priestley tell Antoine Lavoisier about dephlogisticated air?
When was Antoine Lavoisier’s Elementary Treatise on Chemistry published?
When was Antoine Lavoisier’s new chemical naming system published?
Where did Antoine Lavoisier grow up?
Which experiments helped Antoine Lavoisier disprove the phlogiston theory?
Which school did Antoine Lavoisier attend in Paris?
Who was executed with Antoine Lavoisier in 1794?
Why did Antoine Lavoisier name hydrogen water producer?
Why did Antoine Lavoisier name oxygen after the Greek words for acid producer?
Why did Antoine Lavoisier weigh gases as well as solid substances?
Why did Antoine Lavoisier’s chemical nomenclature become widely accepted?
Why did Marie-Anne Lavoisier translate English chemistry books for Antoine Lavoisier?
Why is Antoine Lavoisier called a founder of modern chemistry?
Why was Antoine Lavoisier elected to the Academy of Sciences?
Why was Antoine Lavoisier executed during the Reign of Terror?
Why was Antoine Lavoisier’s belief that oxygen caused acidity not completely correct?
Who was Louis Vuitton?
How did Louis Vuitton start his business?
Why did Louis Vuitton’s luggage designs become popular?
How has the Louis Vuitton brand changed and grown since his time?
What did Marie Curie accomplish?
What awards did Marie Curie win?
Why was Marie Curie important?
What is Marie Curie most famous for?
What did Marie Curie discover?
How did Marie Curie die?

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External Websites

Famous Scientists - Antoine Lavoisier
American Physiological Society Publications - The collaboration of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier and the ﬁrst measurements of human oxygen consumption
National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Antoine de LavoisierÂ’s role in designing a single-blind trial to assess whether Â‘Animal MagnetismÂ’ exists
Science History Institute Museum and Library - Biography of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
American Chemical Society - The Chemical Revolution of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
Indian Academy Sciences - Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
Vigyan Prasar - Lavoisier Antoine Laurent
Europa-Universitï¿½t Flensburg - Biography: Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Antoine Lavoisier

French chemist

Also known as: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

Written by

Arthur L. Donovan

Professor Emeritus of Humanities, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, New York. Author of Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution and others.

Arthur L. Donovan

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

Antoine Lavoisier (born August 26, 1743, Paris, France—died May 8, 1794, Paris) was a prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. Having also served as a leading financier and public administrator before the French Revolution, he was executed with other financiers during the Terror. Lavoisier was the first child and...

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