CHAPTER 8: The New French Chemistry and Atomism: Franklin, Lavoisier, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Ampère (Paris I)

Antoine Lavoisier was the father of the “chemical revolution”, but the victim of another, the French Revolution. We start with Ben Franklin who was a close friend to Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne. We visit a statue of Franklin in one of most scenic places in all of Paris. After discussing Lavoisier's early career, his involvement with the infamous Ferme Générale, and his “new French Chemistry” in which he replaced phlogistic ideas with his oxidation theory, we visit Lavoisier sites all over Paris – his birthplace, where he was christened, lived, worked, imprisoned, guillotined and is now commemorated. The most important of these is the Musée des Arts et Metiers that has a spectacularly reconstructed Lavoisier Laboratory and a collection of his advanced and beautiful balances. At the end, we briefly describe Lavoisier's successors including Claude Berthollet, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, and André-Marie Ampére, their contributions to atomic theory, and sites to visit in Paris, Annecy, and Arcueil. We also describe the Pasteur Museum in the Pasteur Institute as one of the best scientific/historical sites in the world.