A chemistry experiment in a time of chain reactions
Lavoisier in the Year One
The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution
Madison Smartt Bell
W.W. Norton: 214 pp., $22.95
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Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) was a -- possibly even the -- founding father of the chemical revolution: a Washington, a Jefferson or a Franklin. (Lavoisier in fact knew Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait, since lost, was painted by Lavoisier’s wife, Marie-Anne.) But although Lavoisier revolutionized chemistry and supported the ideals of both the American and French revolutions, his illustrious and productive life was cut short when he was executed as an enemy of the people during France’s Reign of Terror.
The all-too-obvious ironies of his fate are duly noted in Madison Smartt Bell’s useful book, pointedly (though perhaps somewhat misleadingly) titled “Lavoisier in the Year One.” Fortunately, Bell does not limit his coverage to a single year but portrays the rest of Lavoisier’s life as well, focusing particularly on the discoveries, theories and other achievements that brought him lasting fame.
Bell does, however, begin with the “Year One,” which is to say the year beginning Sept. 22, 1792, designated by Robespierre’s victorious radical faction as the first year of the Revolutionary Calendar. Toward the end of that year (on Sept. 10, 1793, by the old calendar), officials acting for the Committee of Public Safety seized Lavoisier’s papers at his home. There was nothing suspect for them to find, but it was the beginning of the end for him anyway. France’s most eminent scientist was condemned not for his scientific discoveries, but because he had happened to derive most of his income from his lucrative position as a tax collector. That he had been as scrupulous in this (and his other public responsibilities) as he had been in his scientific work proved to be of no avail in the overheated climate of that terrible year.
Abolishing the old calendar and beginning anew -- copied more recently by Cambodia’s Pol Pot, whose killing fields made Robespierre’s Reign of Terror look like a model of wisdom and restraint -- was one type of revolutionary activity that Lavoisier favored. Indeed, at the time, he was busy formulating a new, more logical system of weights and measurements: the metric system, which, unlike the revolutionary calendar, is still with us.
“Revolution as Lavoisier saw it had the stately inevitability of planets revolving around the sun,” Bell reflects. “The streets of Paris running with blood did not enter into his vision. The replacement of one order by another was revolution enough for him. He did not foresee an order succeeded by anarchy.” Lavoisier revolutionized chemistry, transforming it from a somewhat haphazard, unsystematic enterprise into an organized, rational discipline. Needless to say, because science is not a one-man endeavor, he was not alone in his work. It was the Age of Enlightenment and discoveries were abounding: Franklin and electricity, David Cavendish and hydrogen, Joseph Priestley and oxygen, to name but a few. Lavoisier’s claim to the title of founding father is based not only on his discoveries, important as they were, but also on his establishment of a methodology and a system of nomenclature that is the foundation of modern chemistry.
By formulating the principle of the conservation of matter and making it the cornerstone of his method of experimentation, Lavoisier also showed how chemical reactions can be represented in the form of equations and used to analyze the composition of substances. After untold centuries in which it was generally believed that earth, water, air and fire were “elemental” substances, Lavoisier devised a method for finding out what a chemical element actually was. He discovered that air was a mixture of gases such as oxygen (the name he gave to it) and nitrogen, and that water was a compound of oxygen and hydrogen.
This volume is the latest in Atlas Books’ “Great Discoveries” series, an imprint with the admirable goal of conveying world-changing scientific advances and ideas to the general (i.e., nonscientist) reader and employing belletristic writers to do so.
In presenting the gist of Lavoisier’s life story and explaining the nature of his work, Bell helps us appreciate the magnitude of his achievement. Bell succeeds, not only in depicting the rigorousness of Lavoisier’s method but also in conveying a sense of his character, as revealed most affectingly by the quietly heroic composure with which he faced his own death.
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Merle Rubin is a contributing writer to Book Review.
