h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Although it was lavousier who organised all of the data, and knobbled the phlogiston theory, it was based on the data by a british chemist who was the first to do incredible work with the collection and classification of gases. unfortunately I cant seem to remember his name at the moment, so I will try to look through some of my reference stuff and find it. Anyway, this englishman (I think he was english) generated the data, lavousier made a daring and justly rewarded leap and organised it into the theory that we know today, and this english guy spent the rest of his life fighting the theory, cos he was devoted to the phlogiston theory. What a shame he was such a good experimenter, but so bad at beleiving what the results told him.

The englishman who's name I could not remember is priestley. He did pioneering work on the collection and classification of gasses, and among other things, discovered oxygen. When his work and methods made it across the channel to lavoisier, he took the techniques, and the results that they produced, and looked at them from a completely new angle, culminating in his discovery of the modern way of looking at chemistry, and the permanent defeat of the phlogiston theory. although most of the people who were dedicated to the phlogiston theory continued to believe in it until their deaths.

Joseph preistly did pioneering work on the isolation and catagorisation of gases, and published a book about pneumatic chemistry. Later he discovered how to isolate oxygen from mercury calx (mercuric oxide), and withina few days had to stop work and travel europe with his patron lord shelbourne, to whom thebook was dedicated. This led to his meeting with laviosier in october 1774, where he told him his method for producing oxygen. A little earlier, laviosier published his own book on pheumatic chemistry, which he sent to a swedish pharmacist. A few days after the meeting with preistly, laviosier got a letter from this man (sheele) who told of his own production of oxygen using the identical method to preistly. The unusual properties of oxygen, combined with laviosier's genuis for theoretical chemistry, caused him to replace the phlogiston theory with the idea of metals forming oxides. This attack on the phlogistion theory was started in 1783, and after a few years, laviosier had managed to pick up the work of another man (I can't remember who) who was reworking chemistry to get rid of the alchemical and archaic names given to chemicals. Laviosier managed to rework this, and his own work on oxygen and metalic oxides, into a simple version of the modern idea of a set of elements (32) combining in various relatively simple ways. This reformation was published in 1789, the same year that laviosier was put to death by the french revolution for being a tax collector under the previous government. It revolutionisedthe practice of chemistry.

Thanks for this additional information. I certainly don't deny that there were others who contributed to the effort, but Laviosier's name is writ large in the greater scheme of things and therefore has been highlighted. There are, without doubt, other names connected with both the introduction and support of the Phlogiston threory and with it's decline, a century later, due to empirical thinking; but, I felt the current article conveys enough information without resorting to providing a list of associated parties and scientists.

Fair enough, but I thought it gave laviosier too mmuch credit as an experimenter, when he was mainly a genuis theoretician.

As far as I remember, it were indeed Lavoisier's experimental efforts that were crucial for his place in chemical history. He was the first who weighed the substances accurately. And since eg magnesium is lighter than the magnesia that it transforms to by burning it can't be that something (phlogiston) is lost but vice versa.

I am not denying that lavousier did that experiment, but the fact that lots of substances got heavier when burned was what caused the problems for the phlogiston theory in the first place. It was getting so stretched out of shape to fit the facts, that it was a well known problem with the theory even before he went to school.
His experimental work was (as far as I know) just confirming what he had been told, his genius in using the discovery of oxygen to reform chemistry was one thing that he deserves credit for, the other is taking this theory, and combining it with the work of another scientist to reform chemical nomclemanture so that we now have a sensible way of refering to simple compounds, rather than each village having their own different names for the same chemicals.
He does not get sufficient credit for that at all.

You're right, Lavoisier frequently used other people's experimental results and combined them in his theories. But nevertheless he reproduced these experiments in a very thorough and professional manner and freed them from alchemistic practices. Additionally, as I said, he weighed substances extremely accurately (0.0005g) and hence was able to present the law of conservation of mass. His contributions to experimental science were indeed vital.

Your postings were correct too, and contained lots of interesting facts (my knowledge has greatly grown), but I think the impression that the The Apprentice's article gives is all right.