Lavoisier Disproves Phlogiston

1785

In a series of elegant sealed-vessel experiments, Antoine Lavoisier proved that combustion was combination with oxygen, not the release of some mysterious fire-substance. He renamed the gases, wrote a new chemistry textbook, and in doing so made chemistry modern. His wife Marie-Anne drew the diagrams. Nine years later the Revolution would guillotine him, prompting Lagrange's famous lament that it took a moment to cut off a head that a century could not replace.