Thread by @Helenreflects

🧵on Marie Anne Lavoisier, mother of modern chemistry. Her husband Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was central to chemical revolution & discovery of role of oxygen in chemical processes.
Marie Anne's contribution is less well-known.
This painting of them recently was in the news 1/

The painting (by J-L David) was in the news for a peculiar reason.
Conservators found out the painting was edited: originally Marie Anne wore a hat! And there were no scientific instruments on the table. I'll come to reasons for these edits in a bit 2/
news.artnet.com/art-world/hidd…

What is less known is that Marie Anne was a chemist in her own right. She worked together with her husband in the lab, making meticulous notes of experiments. She even translated works in early chemistry for him from English (Antoine could not read English) 3/

As can be read in this article, the Lavoisiers devoted much of their lives to understanding the reactions and products of combustion, a poorly understood phenomenon. Marie Anne made detailed drawings of the scientific instruments they used e.g., here 4/

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…

Before chemists understood the role of oxygen in combustion, the reigning theory was the phlogiston theory, which erroneously held that during combustion "phlogiston" escapes. This is in fact the reverse of what happens during oxygenation (as Lavoisier described) 5/

However, to come to that finding it was crucial that Lavoisier had access to findings from England (e.g., Priestley). Priestley himself did not discover oxygen, but his experiments were crucial to its discovery. Marie Anne's translations helped Antoine to learn about this work 6/

She also assisted in experiments, making drawings of the setup (important given that science in the 18th century was done a lot in the domestic sphere.) This is a wonderful drawing by Marie Anne showing an experiment of oxygen consumption, she's all on the right. 7/

It is also of note that science in 18th c was a domestic leisure activity, unlike now in universities. Paradoxically, this opened up science to women (who would still be formally excluded from universities for a long time). Cf his podcast! 8/ bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0…

It is important (see podcast above) to see the role of women like Marie Anne in Enlightenment context, where there was an increased emancipation of women, and an increasing recognition of their potential role in science and scholarship (e.g., as hostesses of salons) 9/

Ok so on to the painting. There is a tragic backstory to this (see here). The painter himself, David, edited the painting, adding the instruments and taking away Marie Anne's extravagant hat. The reason was the French revolution... 10/

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/jac…

"David reportedly planned to debut the original portrait at a salon in 1789, but he withdrew the work on the advice of royal authorities"--the reason was that the painting might upset sensibilities (which became increasingly anti-nobility) 11/

Lavoisier was a wealthy tax collector, an enemy of the French revolution, and executed by guillotine in 1794 during la Terreur. Marie Anne did her utmost to save her husband, trying to convince the revolutionaries about the importance of his scientific contributions to France 12/

Marie Anne, left penniless by confiscation of her property and devastated by her husband's death edited & published her husband's Mémoires de Chimie, a compilation of his & colleagues' papers demonstrating the principles of the new chemistry, which helped to secure his legacy 13/

Here is another nice article on Marie Anne as editor and draftswoman. (She was severely depressed following the death of her husband AND father on the same day by guillotine--who wouldn't be!--but still managed to recover scientific equipment) /end
journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.11…