Antoine Lavoisier

Lavoisier with his wife

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794) was a French chemist who lived in the 1700s. He discovered the chemical basis of combustion and also found that animal metabolism is a form of combustion. His discovered the law of conservation of mass in chemical reactions.

Other discoveries include the elements oxygen and hydrogen, as well as the realization that water was not an element.

Lavoisier was from a well-off family. His father worked as a lawyer. Lavoisier himself pursued law school as well as natural sciences for a long time, then worked as a tax collector. Following the French Revolution he was guillotined due to his association with the monarchy.