Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent 1743-94
French chemist

Born in Paris, he accepted the office of farmer-general of taxes (1768) to finance his investigations. As director of the government powder mills (1776), he greatly improved gunpowder, its supply and manufacture, and successfully applied chemistry to agriculture. He discovered oxygen, by rightly interpreting Joseph Priestley's facts, its importance in respiration, combustion and as a compound with metals. His Trait� �l�mentaire de chimie (1789, 'Treaty of Elementary Chemistry') was a masterpiece. Politically liberal, he saw the great necessity for reform in France but was against revolutionary methods. Despite a lifetime of work for the state, inquiring into the problems of taxation (which he helped to reform), hospitals and prisons, he was guillotined as a farmer of taxes.

Bibliography: V Grey, The Chemist Who Lost His Head (1982)