Landmark designation


The American Chemical Society and the Société Française de Chimie designated the chemical revolution at the Royal Academy of Sciences as an International Historic Chemical Landmark on June 8, 1999, in Paris. The English version of the text of the plaque presented to the Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France reads:

In these buildings, then "Collège Mazarin" or "des Quatre-Nations," Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) studied from 1754 to 1761. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1768, where he presented his important studies on oxygen in chemistry. These began with a "pli cacheté" of Nov. 2, 1772, and, after he experimentally proved the chemical composition of water by the quantitative method, culminated in his abandoning of the phlogistic theory in 1785. In 1787, he proposed the principles of a new Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique, in collaboration with the chemists Guyton de Morveau, Berthollet, and Fourcroy and with the help of the mathematicians Monge and Laplace. The publication of his Traité Elémentaire de Chimie two years later convinced French and foreign chemists of his theories. His papers, stored in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, bear witness to the conception and maturing of his revolutionary ideas, which are at the foundations of modern chemistry.
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The chemical heritage of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier | Combustion and the attack on phlogiston
A new chemistry emerges | Lavoisier's American legacy
The life of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) | Landmark designation

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