Born in Paris, 1743; guillotined, May 8, 1794.
The founder of modern chemistry. His father, a wealthy merchant, gave
him an excellent education, but from his early youth he showed a
precocious taste for science, and when only twenty-one he received the
prize that the Academy of Science had offered “for discovering the best
manner of lighting the streets of great towns.” In 1768 he was elected
Academician. Turgot, in 1776, gave to this great chemist the direction
of the manufacture of gunpowder and saltpetre. In the course of the
next ten years Lavoisier made innumerable useful scientific discoveries.
Elected Deputy to the National Assembly in 1789; in 1791 he was named
Commissionary of the Treasury, and propounded a scheme which, had it
been carried out, would have been of immense economical service to
France. He took an active part in the construction of the new system
of weights and measures, and constructed in the gardens of the arsenal
apparatus for experiments to aid this purpose.
In 1793 he measured the base of the new meridian; as Treasurer of the
Academy he put in order the whole of the accounts of that body; and was
able to discover funds which no one was aware the Academy possessed.
In 1769 he had received a post as _Fermier-Général_ from the
Crown; and although such offices had long ceased to exist Robespierre
caused his arrest in 1794, and, on the sole plea that it was the will
of the people that no _Fermier-Général’s_ life should be spared,
the head of this great citizen fell upon the scaffold: four other
former _Fermier-Généraux_, including his father-in-law, M. Poulze,
perished the same day.