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Lavoisier died at age 50, on the guillotine
- chanux 11y agoDoes anyone know of a science history book that probably reads like this?
- mbrutsch 11y ago> magnetic healing devices of no clinical value are "a billion-dollar boondoggle". Still going strong today.
- dekhn 11y agoOther interesting Lavoisier facts: he used to hang around the imperial gardens with a massive lens using it to burn things inside sealed chambers. This always makes me think of kids with lenses and ants, but the work was key to understanding the nature of oxygen. his wife was a great scholar too, she diagrammed his work, and translated it and other works (french/german/english).
- ameen 11y agoSuch injustice. Who knows what else he had on his mind before he was decapitated. Bias does no one any good. He was punished only because of his social standing and profession. He did no ill towards his fellow frenchmen yet was butchered to satiate their hatred towards the "elite".
- pfortuny 11y agoNot the only one to die just because, in those times.
- SeldomSoup 11y agoThe French Revolution saw so much bloodshed for so little change (for the ordinary people at least).
- ptaipale 11y agoAlso I see some irony that when there is a terrorist attack that kills innocent people in Paris, the way to show solidarity is to sing this in football matches: Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They're coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your women! To arms, citizens, form your battalions, Let's march, let's march! Let an impure blood soak our fields!
- jacquesm 11y agoI agree it was a lot of bloodshed but eventually the change was huge. France is still by far the most socialist country in Western Europe.
- mercurial 11y agoThe major impact was the rise of national identities following the revolutionary wars and Napoleonic conquests. The same population who took part in the Terror voted happily for noted autocrat Napoleon, then lived under kings of various levels of mediocrity, briefly under a Republic before electing the then-President Emperor (because that turned out so well the first time), before returning to a Republican regime after being beaten by Bismark. The current blend of social democracy (though less and less social these days) has little in the way of direct filiation with the original French Revolution.
- jacquesm 11y ago
- julienchastang 11y agoThe murder of Lavoisier is one of the most horrible outcomes of the French Revolution -- which was generally horrific, mass drownings [1], Reign of Terror (the word 'terrorism' comes from this episode in French history[2]) and whatnot. That is what I think about on Le Quatorze Juillet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownings_at_Nantes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownings_at_Nantes [2] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism
- geyang 11y agoanother fun fact about them: Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, his wife remarried to a rich publisher after Lavoisier's death, who supported her to publish a lot of the work. (both awesome people) David, the guy who painted this portrait was the person who signed Lavoisier's guillotine papers. The story goes David was an amateur scientist, had some presentations, and was humiliated when Lavoisier make it clear that it was pseudo science. David wanted to be elected to the royal society but because of this never got to. He was a friend but thus became the enemy. He also painted the painting "death of Marat". He himself was executed a year later.
- ddebernardy 11y agoI'm suspicious that you can really describe the French Revolution as "generally horrific". Sure, there were quite a few executions (~40k or so), that were often arbitrary and spectacular. And the Vendée rebellion got massacred (~100k+ depending on the source) [1]. But what really contributed to the death toll were the Revolutionary wars [2] and the Napoleon campaigns [3]. By contrast, modern warfare with machine guns, artillery, bombers, and genocide regularly yielded much higher death tolls [4]. [1] http://necrometrics.com/wars18c.htm#FrRev1 http://necrometrics.com/wars18c.htm#FrRev1 [2] http://necrometrics.com/wars18c.htm#FrRev http://necrometrics.com/wars18c.htm#FrRev [3] http://necrometrics.com/wars19c.htm#Napoleonic http://necrometrics.com/wars19c.htm#Napoleonic [4] http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm
- dfcarpenter 11y agoI studied Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry in a great books program and it truly deserved its place. We traced the development of chemistry from the classical period up to the development of the periodic table, performing experiments along the way. Having such a view of chemistry allowed us to see just how revolutionary Lavoisier's classification system truly was and how it allowed chemistry to really make progress after that.
- peter303 11y agoNOVA broadcasted a nice piece on him on the centenary of Relativity a few weeks ago. A book was written about Eisteins enery equation explaining who invented each term. Lavoiser is credited with 'm' for the conservation of mass. Einstein generalized this conservation to the total of E and m together instead of each independently.
- coldcode 11y agoWhen I was getting two degrees in Chemistry Lavoisier was one of my heroes. Hard to believe how someone in the 1700's had so many modern insights given how he was taught and how primitive all the knowledge was then.