New Light on Lavoisier: The Research of the Last Ten Years

McKie D. , Antoine Lavoisier, scientist, economist, social reformer (London and New York, 1952; reprinted, New York, 1962).

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , A bibliography of the works of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, 1743–1794 (London, 1954). Reference will be made in this article to a number of other publications by Duveen and Klickstein. A list of all their publications from 1950 to 1956 is given in Actes du VIII^e Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences, Florence et Milan, 1956 (Florence and Paris, 1958) 531–6.

Isis, liii (1962) 222.

Oeuvres de Lavoisier, tome VII, Correspondance, recueillie et annotée par René Fric. Fascicule I, 1763–1769 (Paris, 1955) and fascicule II, 1770–1775 (Paris, 1957).

See the reviews by Daumas M. , “Nouvelles sources imprimées sur Lavoisier”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, viii (1955) 256–67 and Birembaut A. , “La correspondance de Lavoisier”, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xxix (1957) 340–51.

Daumas M. , Lavoisier, théoricien et expérimentateur (Paris, 1955).

Partington J. R. , A history of chemistry (London, 1962) iii, 363 sqq.

Guerlac H. , “A note on Lavoisier's scientific education”, Isis, xlvii (1956) 211–6.

Rappaport Rhoda , “G.-F. Rouelle: An eighteenth-century chemist and teacher”, Chymia, vi (1960) 68–101.

Rappaport Rhoda , “Rouelle and Stahl—the phlogistic revolution in France”, Chymia, vii (1961) 73–102.

Birembaut A. , “A propos des biographies de Lavoisier”, Actes du Septième Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences, Jerusalem, 1953 (Paris, n.d.) 216–20.

Smeaton W. A. , “L'Avant-Coureur. The journal in which some of Lavoisier's earliest research was reported”, Annals of science, xiii (1957 [1959]) 219–34.

McKie D. , “The Observations of the abbé François Rozier (1734–93)”, Annals of science, xiii (1957 [1959]) 73–89.

Duveen D. I. Hahn R. , “A note on some Lavoisiereana in the Journal de Paris”, Isis, li (1960) 64–66; Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Le Journal Polytype des Sciences et des Arts”, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xlviii (1954) 402–10; Scheler L. , “Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier et le Journal d'Histoire Naturelle”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xiv (1961) 1–9.

Guerlac H. , “Some French antecedents of the chemical revolution”, Chymia, v (1959) 73–112.

Guerlac H. , “The origins of Lavoisier's work on combustion”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) 113–35. See also Guerlac's Lavoisier, the crucial year (Ithaca, 1961).

Guerlac H. , “A curious Lavoisier episode”, Chymia, vii (1961) 103–8.

Guerlac H. , “Joseph Priestley's first papers on gases and their reception in France”, Journal of the history of medicine, xii (1957) 1–12.

Guerlac H. , Lavoisier, the crucial year (Ithaca, 1961), 12 sqq.

Ibid., 217.

Partington J. R. , “The discovery of oxygen”, Journal of chemical education, xxxix (1962) 123–5.

Boklund U. , “A lost letter from Scheele to Lavoisier”, Lychnos, (1957) 39–62.

Partington J. R. , “Chemistry as rationalised alchemy”, Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, i (1951) 129–35. An example of Lavoisier's reluctance to give credit to others is found in an anecdote recounted by E. C. E. Genet, who in 1783 saw Lavoisier repeating at the Academy some of Priestley's experiments without acknowledgement; see the note by Phillips T. D. , “Lavoisier and Priestley”, Isis, xlvi (1955) 53.

Partington J. R. , “Lavoisier's memoir on the composition of nitric acid”, Annals of science, ix (1953) 96–98.

Daumas M. Duveen D. I. , “Lavoisier's relatively unknown large-scale decomposition and synthesis of water, February 27 and 28, 1785”, Chymia, v (1959) 113–29.

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “A letter from Berthollet to Blagden relating to the experiments for a large-scale synthesis of water carried out by Lavoisier and Meusnier in 1785”, Annals of science, x (1954) 58–62.

Lavoisier's incomplete Mémoires de chimie is generally said to have been published by his widow in 1805, but it has been shown that Berthollet quoted from it in 1803. See Partington J. R. , Chemistry and Industry (1955) 1475; the evidence is discussed by Smeaton W. A. , The Library (1956) 132–3.

Duveen D. I. Scheler L. , “Des illustrations inédites pour les Mémoires de chimie, ouvrage posthume de Lavoisier”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) 345–53.

Duveen D. I. , “Madame Lavoisier, 1758–1836”, Chymia, iv (1953) 13–29.

Gillispie C. C. , “Notice biographique de Lavoisier par Madame Lavoisier”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, ix (1956) 52–61.

McKie D. , “On some pre-publication copies of Lavoisier's Traité (1789)”, Ambix, ix (1961) 37–46.

Boas Marie , “Structure of matter and chemical theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”, in Clagett M. (ed.), Critical problems in the history of science (Madison, 1959) 499–514.

Guerlac H. , “Quantification in chemistry”, Isis, lii (1961) 194–214.

See reference 23 (Partington).

Multhauf R. P. , “On the use of the balance in chemistry”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cvi (1962) 210–18.

Fric R. , “Contribution à l'étude de l'évolution des idées de Lavoisier sur la nature de l'air et sur la calcination des métaux”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) 137–68. The existence and the principal contents of this memoir had been inferred from other evidence by H. Guerlac; see his “A lost memoir of Lavoisier”, Isis, 1 (1959) 125–9.

Duveen D. I. Hahn R. , “Deux lettres de Laplace à Lavoisier”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xi (1958) 337–42.

Foregger R. , “Respiration experiments of Lavoisier”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xiii (1960) 103–6.

Mendelsohn E. , “The controversy over the site of heat production in the body”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cv (1961) 412–20.

Goodfield G. J. , The growth of scientific physiology. Physiological method and the mechanist–vitalist controversy, illustrated by the problems of respiration and animal heat (London, 1960).

Kuhn T. S. , “The caloric theory of adiabatic compression”, Isis, xlix (1958) 132–40.

Reflections on the motive power of fire by Sadi Carnot and other papers on the second law of thermodynamics by E. Clapeyron and R. Clausius, edited with an introduction by Mendoza E. (New York, 1960).

Smeaton W. A. , Fourcroy, chemist and revolutionary, 1755–1809 (London, 1962) 7, 94, 96.

Partington J. R. , “Berthollet and the antiphlogistic theory”, Chymia, v (1959) 130–37.

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “A letter from Guyton de Morveau to [Macquer] relating to Lavoisier's attack on the phlogiston theory (1778); with an account of de Morveau's conversion to Lavoisier's doctrines in 1787”, Osiris, xii (1956) 342–67. See Isis, xlix (1958) 73–4, for the correct identification of Macquer as the addressee. For a further discussion of de Morveau's attitude to Lavoisier's theories, see Smeaton W. A. , “Guyton de Morveau's course of chemistry in the Dijon Academy”, Ambix, ix (1961) 53–69.

Smeaton W. A. , “Fourcroy and the antiphlogistic theory”, Endeavour, xviii (1959) 70–74; idem, Fourcroy, chemist and revolutionary, 1755–1809 (London, 1962).

Crosland M. P. , Historical studies in the language of chemistry (London, 1962) 133 sqq. More limited in scope, but still of some value, is Smeaton W. A. , “The contributions of P. J. Macquer, T. O. Bergman and L. B. Guyton de Morveau to the reform of chemical nomenclature”, Annals of science, x (1954) 87–106.

Smeaton W. A. , “Two unrecorded publications of the Régie des Poudres et Salpêtres, probably written by Lavoisier”, Annals of science, xii (1956 [1957]) 157–9.

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Two early American eulogies on Lavoisier”, Journal of the history of medicine, viii (1953) 442–4; “The introduction of Lavoisier's chemical nomenclature into America”, Isis, xlv (1954) 278–92 and 368–82; “A bibliographical study of the introduction of Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie into Great Britain and America”, Annals of science, x (1954) 321–38.

Edelstein S. M. , “The chemical revolution in America from the pages of the ‘Medical Repository’”, Chymia, v (1959) 155–79.

Siegfried R. , “An attempt in the United States to resolve the differences between the oxygen and phlogiston theories”, Isis, xlvi (1955) 327–36.

Alexander Martha , “Early acceptance of Lavoisier's theories in Holland”, Journal of the history of medicine, xiv (1959) 81–84.

Leicester H. M. , “The spread of Lavoisier's theory in Russia”, Chymia, v (1959) 138–44.

Birembaut A. , “L'Académie Royale des Sciences en 1780 vue par l'astronome suédois Lexell (1740–1784)”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, x (1957) 148–66.

Duveen D. I. Hahn R. , “Laplace's succession to Bézout's post of Examinateur des Elèves de l'Artillerie”, Isis, xlviii (1957) 416–27.

Vergnaud Marguerite , “Science et progrès d'après Lavoisier”, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, xv (1953) 174–86.

Scheler L. , “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier et Michel Adanson, rédacteurs de programmes des prix à l'Académie des Sciences”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xiv (1961) 257–84.

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)”, Annals of science, xi (1955 [1955–7]), 103–28 and 271–302, and xiii (1957 [1958]) 30–46.

Lopez Claude A. , “Saltpetre, tin and gunpowder: Addenda to the correspondence of Lavoisier and Franklin”, Annals of science, xvi (1960 [1962]) 83–94.

Smeaton W. A. , “Lavoisier's membership of the Société Royale de Médecine”, Annals of science, xii (1956 [1957]) 228–44.

Fulton J. F. Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's 'Réflexions sur les effets de l'éther vitriolique et de l'éther nitreux dans l'économie animale'”, Journal of the history of medicine, viii (1953) 318–23.

Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's contributions to medicine and public health”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxix (1955) 164–79.

Richmond Phyllis A. , “The Hôtel-Dieu of Paris on the eve of the Revolution”, Journal of the history of medicine, xvi (1961) 335–53.

Smeaton W. A. , “Lavoisier's membership of the Société Royale d'Agriculture and the Comité d'Agriculture”, Annals of Science, xii (1956 [1957]) 267–77. Lavoisier's agricultural research continued until the last year of his life. On 10 June 1793 he appealed successfully against the requisition by the local government authorities of the horses at his experimental farm. See Bouis R. , “Un écho d'une réclamation de Lavoisier en 1793”, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xxvii (1955) 168–9.

Dowd D. Ll. , Pageant-master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1948) 19.

Scheler L. , Lavoisier et la Révolution française. II. Le journal de Fougeroux de Bondaroy, édité avec la collaboration de W. A (Paris, 1960).

Smeaton W. A. , “Lavoisier's membership of the Assembly of Representatives of the Commune of Paris, 1789–1790”, Annals of science, xiii (1957 [1959]) 235–48.

Duveen D. I. , “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and the French Revolution”, Journal of chemical education, xxxi (1954) 60–65; xxxiv (1957) 502–3; xxxv (1958) 233–4 and 470–71. During the Revolution Lavoisier did not leave Paris, except to visit his farm at Frécluires ( Duveen D. I. , “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: A note regarding his domicile during the French Revolution”, Isis, xlii (1951) 233–4). By an error his name was included in a list of émigrés drawn up in the Department of the Oise, where his family owned property, but it was deleted from the list on 1 July 1793, after a certificate of residence had been received from the authorities in Paris. See Dommanget M. , “Lavoisier à Crépy-en-Valois et Villers-Cotterêts”, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xxxiii (1961) 267–9.

Smeaton W. A. , loc. cit. (reference 43) 44 sqq.

Birembaut A. , “Les deux déterminations de l'unité de masse du système métrique”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) 25–54.

Birembaut A. , “Quelques aspects de la personnalité de Lavoisier”. In Actes du Congrès de Luzembourg. 72^e Session de l'Association Française pour l'Avancement des Sciences (Juillet 1953) 539–42.

See reference 11.

See reference 64.

Fayet J. , La Révolution française et la science, 1789–1795 (Paris, 1960). Reviewed by Hahn R. , Isis, li (1960) 605–7.

Gillispie C. C. , “The Encyclopédie and Jacobin philosophy of science: A study in ideas and consequences”, in Clagett M. (ed.), Critical problems in the history of science (Madison, 1959) 255–89. Williams L. Pearce , “The politics of science in the French Revolution”, ibid., 291–308. Commentaries by Hill H. B. (ibid., 309–16) and Guerlac H. (ibid., 317–20).

Scheler L. , Lavoisier et la Révolution française. I. Le Lycée des Arts (Paris, 1956; édition revue et corrigée, Paris, 1957). Smeaton W. A. , “The early years of the Lycée and the Lycée des Arts. II. The Lycée des Arts”, Annals of science, xi (1955 [1957]) 309–19. Some additional information is given in a review of Scheler's work by Birembaut A. , Revue d'histoire des sciences, xi (1958) 267–73.

Abrahams H. J. , “Lavoisier's proposals for French education”, Journal of chemical education, xxxi (1954) 413–6; idem, “A summary of Lavoisier's proposals for training in science and medicine”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxxii (1958) 389–407.

See Guillaume J. , Procès-verbaux du Comité d'Instruction publique de la Convention Nationale (Paris, 1894) ii, pp. xxxiii and 895–901.

Duveen D. I. , “Augustin François Silvestre and the Société Philomathique”, Annals of science, x (1954) 339–41.

Smeaton W. A. , “The early years of the Lycée and the Lycée des Arts. I. The Lycée of the Rue de Valois”, Annals of science, xi (1955 [1956]) 257–67.

Grimaux E. , Lavoisier (Paris, 1888) 267.

Kersaint G. , “Lavoisier, Fourcroy et le scrutin épuratoire du lycée de la rue de Valois”, Bulletin de la Société Chimique de France (1958) 259. Some of Kersaint's conclusions have been discussed by Hahn R. , Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) 285–8.

The warrant for his arrest was dated 24 November 1793. See Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “Some new facts relating to the arrest of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier”, Isis, xlix (1958) 347–8.

Vergnaud Marguerite , “Un savant pendant la Révolution”, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, xvii (1954) 123–39.

C. C. Gillispie (reference 30) has published a manuscript describing an attempt by Fourcroy to persuade Robespierre to release Lavoisier. It has been shown by Kersaint G. (Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie, (1957) 175) that it was written by A. Laugier. See also: Kersaint G. , “Fourcroy a-t-il fait des démarches pour sauver Lavoisier?”, Revue générale des sciences, lxv (1958) 27–31; Duveen D. I. , “Lavoisier writes to Fourcroy from prison”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xiii (1958) 59–60; Scheler L. , “A propos d'une lettre de Fourcroy à Lavoisier du 3 septembre 1793”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xv (1962) 43–50; Smeaton W. A. , loc. cit. (reference 43) 53–59.

Scheler L. Smeaton W. A. , “An account of Lavoisier's reconciliation with the Church a short time before his death”, Annals of science, xiv (1958 [1960]) 148–53.

Bouillon-Lagrange's éloge has been reprinted by L. Scheler (see reference 76). It may have been on the occasion of this ceremony that a medallion portrait of Lavoisier, now in the possession of the American Philosophical Society, was made; see Scheler L. , “Note sur un portrait inconnu de Lavoisier”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xiv (1961)) 10–12. For an account of the ceremony, see Lemay P. , “La pompe funèbre de Lavoisier au Lycée des Arts”, Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie, xlvi (1958) 230–36.

See reference 30.

Institut de France, Académie des Sciences, Procès-verbaux des séances de l'Académie (Hendaye, 1910) i, 30. These published minutes of the Institut from 1795 onwards seem to have been neglected by historians of science.