Antoine Lavoisier
The founder of modern chemistry, who was among the French academicians who decided that a stone seen to fall in 1768 was an ordinary rock struck by lightning.
Key facts
- Born
- 1743
- Died
- 1794
- Nationality
- French
- Field
- Chemist
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier is one of the most important chemists who ever lived. He showed that burning is a reaction with oxygen, named oxygen and hydrogen, helped create the system of chemical names still used today, and established that mass is conserved in chemical reactions.
In September 1768 a stone fell near the village of Lucé in France, after a loud noise was heard. The French Academy of Sciences asked three of its members, among them the young Lavoisier, to examine a sample. They tested it and found a grey stone containing iron and sulphur. Because they did not believe that stones could fall from the sky, they concluded that this was an ordinary rock that had been struck by lightning, which had melted its surface.
The verdict was reasonable by the standards of the time, but it was wrong. The Lucé stone was a meteorite, and its black glassy surface was fusion crust. Lavoisier's report is often quoted as a lesson in how even the best scientists can dismiss evidence that does not fit what they already believe.
Lavoisier did not live to see the matter settled. He also worked as a tax collector, and during the Terror of the French Revolution he was arrested and executed by guillotine in 1794, the same year Ernst Chladni published his case for rocks from space.
On the timeline
- 13 September 1768Lucé: academicians blame lightning