Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier was a prominent French chemist and a leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution. He developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. He also discovered the role of oxygen in combustion and respiration, and identified hydrogen as a distinct element. He helped construct the metric system and wrote the first extensive list of elements. He also predicted the existence of silicon and disproved the phlogiston theory. He was also a financier and public administrator who was involved in the Ferme générale, a tax collection agency that was unpopular and corrupt. He was accused of tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco during the French Revolution, and was executed by guillotine in 1794. His wife and laboratory assistant, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, became a renowned chemist in her own right and published his works after his death. Lavoisier is widely regarded as the father of modern chemistry and one of the founders of modern biology.