Researched
Modern Chemistry (Lavoisier)
Lavoisier identifies oxygen as an element, shows conservation of mass and sorts substances into elements: chemistry becomes quantitative.
Open in the interactive tree →Boyle (1661) criticized alchemy, and Priestley and Scheele isolated oxygen around 1774. Lavoisier explained combustion correctly as combination with oxygen and weighed consistently. His Traité élémentaire de chimie (1789) contains the first table of elements and is the foundation of the field; he was guillotined in 1794 during the French Revolution.
Prerequisites
- Alchemy & Distillation~800
- Scientific Method~1600-1620
- Boyle's Sceptical Chymist1661Lavoisier completed Boyle's definition of an element by experiment
Unlocks
- Electrolysis (Davy, Faraday)1807
- Atomic Theory (Dalton)1808
- Photography1839
- Vulcanized Rubber1839
- Mineral fertilizer1840Mineral-nutrient theory rests on chemical analysis of plants and soil
- Krebs cycle1937