Lavoisier and his wife in his Royal Arsenal laboratory. |
What
with climate change deniers, anti-evolutionists, new earth enthusiasts, the Republican cretans, and Tea Party zealots, a lot of scientists these days are feeling
pretty put upon and threatened by politics.
But, believe me, it could be worse.
Ask Antoine Lavoisier.
The
French Aristocrat was indisputably
the most famous and important scientist in the world. He is rightfully considered the Father of Modern Chemistry and made
major contribution to biology as well. Most famously he identified and named oxygen as essential to combustion. His English
contemporary, the theologian/philosopher/scientist Joseph Priestley had isolate the element but didn’t understand what
he had found insisting until he died that it was dephlogisticated air, a particularly pure form of common air
deprived of its phlogiston, a theoretic
substance within bodies released
during combustion. Lavoisier would have none of that.
He
also isolated, identified, and named Hydrogen. Other accomplishments included helping
construct the metric system,
creating the first extensive list of elements, reforming chemical nomenclature,
establishing sulfur as an element rather than a compound, predicting the
existence of silicon and discovering
discovered that, although matter may
change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
That’s
a pretty impressive portfolio of accomplishments. You would think that a scientist of such
enormous achievement would be admired by the self-avowed worshipers of reason at the head of the
ever-tumultuous revolutionary French
regimes. You would be wrong.
Like
many minor aristocrats, Lavoisier had been generally supportive of the early
stages of the Revolution, but became increasingly alienated by growing violence
and enmity to the Catholic Church to
which he was devoted. Despite generally
trying to remain aloof from the political turmoil around him, it was known that
he was generally as conservative as his English rival Priestly was radical. After
the execution of Louis XVI in January 1783, his days were
numbered.
Lavoisier
was born to a wealthy family in Paris on August 26, 1743, the son of an
attorney at the Parlement of Paris. His mother died when he was five years old
leaving him a substantial fortune of his own.
His formal schooling began at age
11 at the Collège des Quatre-Nations
in Paris. In his final years before
matriculation he, became obsessed with science, particularly chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics
under the tutelage of Abbé Nicolas Louis
de Lacaille, a noted astronomer.
Despite
these passions the young man dutifully follow his father into a legal
education, graduating with a Bachelor of
Law in 1763 and was admitted to the bar
the following year. He never
practiced, however, and began devoting himself to his experiments. He published his first article on chemistry
the year he graduated law school and read the paper before the prestigious French Academy of Science. In 1766 he was awarded a gold medal by the
King for an essay on the problems of urban street lighting. Then he studied geology under Jean-Étienne Guettard, a leading Enlightenment scholar. That led to an appointment to a geological survey of Alsace-Lorraine in 1767. In 1768 his rapid advancement was recognized
by his appointment to membership in the Academy.
Around
that time he picked up a side line to assure himself of a steady stream of
income while leaving plenty of time for his experiments. That side line would help lead to his
downfall. He bought a share of the Ferme
générale, a corporation which lent money to the Government and Court in
exchange for the right to collect taxes and
import duties. He became a part time fermier
généraux—literally tax farmer—a
position that was a license to print money.
It was also widely despised by those from whom it collected taxes and
seen as enormously corrupt.
At
the age of 28 Lavoisier married the even wealthier Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, the 13-year-old daughter of a senior
member of the Ferme générale. Despite the
age difference, it was a good match and the well-educated a talented young
woman became the scientist’s most important associate as well as his wife. She kept his note, collaborated on his
efforts to systematize chemical nomenclature, and translated important English
scientific papers, including those of Priestly.
She even made sketches and engravings to illustrate Lavoisier’s
experiments.
In
1772 he began the long series of experiments on combustion that led him finally
to identify oxygen and dispute Priestley’s conclusion in his famous Easter Memoir in 1778.
In
addition to his regular scientific work and his lucrative activities as a tax
collector, Lavoisier won another rich plum when he was appointed one of four
members of the Royal Gunpowder Commission,
which was charged with improving the quality French powder and improving the
manufacturing process. He was very
successful at this and turned a former loss for the Crown to a profit making
enterprise and significantly improved French arms. As part of the deal he was also given a home
and a laboratory at the Royal
Arsenal where he lived and worked between 1775 and 1792.
Those
were the happiest and most productive days of his life. Working in close cooperation with a young and
beautiful wife he adored, he made discovery after discover, published important
papers, reaped honors. And the family’s
already considerable fortunes were fattened by the steady stream of income from
the Ferme générale and Gun Powder commission.
Despite his royal patronage, he stayed mostly away from the intrigue and
distraction of Court life—and from the rising discontent bubbling under the
surface of the country.
It
all started to fall apart in 1789 with the eruption of the Revolution—which he
quietly supported in its early days.
Knowing that the Ferme générale was widely unpopular, Lavoisier proposed
reforms which would reduce perceived corruption and ease the onerous tax burden
on the lower levels of society. But
anger at the corporation was too much.
It was dissolved and its fermiers généraux publicly reviled and
humiliated. Next he was dismissed from
the Gun Powder Commission and forced to leave his home and laboratory.
In
1791 Jean-Paul Marat, the radical
journalist, propagandist, and popular leader of the sans-coulottes singled
Lavoisier out for attack. He charged
that the scientist had become rich as a tax collector with a scheme to “adulterate
French tobacco.” No formal charges were
immediately filed, but he found himself if mounting danger. Perhaps when Marat was assassinated he felt
the crisis had passed.
Indeed
despite his distress at the mounting violence and anticlericism of the
Revolution, he seemed to feel that his personal prestige as a scientist would
insulate him. He even spent some of that
prestige in an appeal to allow foreign born scientists to leave the
country. Those scientists were given
leave, but his meddling angered many in power.
In
August of 1793 the Academy, and all other learned societies were repressed,
stripping Lavoisier of his last layer of protection.
Then
at the height of the Reign of Terror Maximilien
de Robespierre, the demagogic leader of the Convention ordered the arrest of former fermiers généraux including
Lavoisier. In addition to the general
charges of corruption against the others, he was also charged with the alleged tobacco
adulteration scheme.
On
May 8, the scientist was arrested and brought to trial. An appeal for clemency so that he could
continue his vital scientific research was harshly denied by the revolutionary
judge who said, “The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course
of justice cannot be delayed.” He and
his 27 other co-defendants were immediately taken from court to the guillotine.
Robespierre,
who had over played his hand, followed Lavoisier to the guillotine just three
months later. By the end of 1795 the new
government officially exonerated him returning his confiscated possessions with
the note “To the widow of Lavoisier, who was falsely convicted.” She spent the rest of her life organizing and
publishing her late husband’s notes.
Meanwhile,
Lavosier’s old scientific rival Priestly had his own problems for opposite
reasons. Priestly was an ardent
supporter of the French Revolution.
Unfortunately he lived in England which was at war with the Republic and was an unpopular religious
Dissenter. In 1791 a mob, whipped up by Tory rhetoric, attacked and burned his Birmingham home and laboratory. Eventfully he had to flee to the United
States with the assistance and support of Thomas Jefferson. He settled
in Pennsylvania where he
concentrated on his preaching. He
introduced English style Unitarianism,
which differed from the theology emerging from the New England churches, to the middle-Atlantic
region.
In
the end, both men were honored. Fat lot
of good it did Lavosier’s health.
Nice supplementary reading to accompany the N deG T reboot of Cosmos now playing.
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