Who? Antoine Lavoisier. That's who.
Widely regarded as the father of modern chemistry, he is credited with identifying oxygen. Actually, he called it 'oxygen gas' and thought of it as consisting of two elements: oxygen, which is the principle of acidity and caloric, which is the principle of heat. It was left to his great rival Joseph Priestley to set right some problems with this way of understanding oxygen.
Lavoisier's contribution to modern science can be summarized this way:
a) He helped bid goodbye to many un-/semi-/pseudo-scientific notions of modern chemistry's predecessor, alchemy.
b) He established clearly the distinction between elements and compounds.
c) Finally, he attached numbers to chemistry, so that things could be measured and therefore predicted.
(Courtesy: 'On Giants' Shoulders' - Melvyn Bragg)
No comments:
Post a Comment