TORCH AND CRUCIBLE: Life of Antoine Lavoisier

Biography of the founder of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier, full, authentic, but marred for popular consumption by a formality of manner and the character of the man himself. Severe, cold, shrewd to his enemies, kindly, liberal to others, such was the man who was to formulate the principles of the then new science. His theory of the conservation of mass, his naming of oxygen and the principle of combustion, finally made him the leading man of his times. His salon combined nobles and intellectuals. But nothing could save him from the guillotine, when Revolution came. Not for the general reader, but for the scientist, primarily.