
Lavoisier died at age 50, on the guillotine - daddy_drank
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/11/the-banker-who-lost-his-head.html
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chanux
Does anyone know of a science history book that probably reads like this?

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peter303
NOVA broadcasted a nice piece on him on the centenary of Relativity a few
weeks ago. A book was written about Eisteins enery equation explaining who
invented each term. Lavoiser is credited with 'm' for the conservation of
mass. Einstein generalized this conservation to the total of E and m together
instead of each independently.

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mbrutsch
> magnetic healing devices of no clinical value are "a billion-dollar
> boondoggle".

Still going strong today.

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dfcarpenter
I studied Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry in a great books program and it
truly deserved its place. We traced the development of chemistry from the
classical period up to the development of the periodic table, performing
experiments along the way. Having such a view of chemistry allowed us to see
just how revolutionary Lavoisier's classification system truly was and how it
allowed chemistry to really make progress after that.

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coldcode
When I was getting two degrees in Chemistry Lavoisier was one of my heroes.
Hard to believe how someone in the 1700's had so many modern insights given
how he was taught and how primitive all the knowledge was then.

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dekhn
Other interesting Lavoisier facts: he used to hang around the imperial gardens
with a massive lens using it to burn things inside sealed chambers. This
always makes me think of kids with lenses and ants, but the work was key to
understanding the nature of oxygen.

his wife was a great scholar too, she diagrammed his work, and translated it
and other works (french/german/english).

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seszett
Nitpicking, but he died before the Empire (and I don't think there were
imperial gardens) so I suppose it was the royal gardens instead (maybe
Versailles or the Tuileries?).

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dekhn
Ah, didn't know that was different. Yes, Tuileries.

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julienchastang
The murder of Lavoisier is one of the most horrible outcomes of the French
Revolution -- which was generally horrific, mass drownings [1], Reign of
Terror (the word 'terrorism' comes from this episode in French history[2]) and
whatnot. That is what I think about on Le Quatorze Juillet.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownings_at_Nantes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownings_at_Nantes)
[2]
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism)

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dudul
Revolutions are violent, especially when they are over-throwing 10 centuries
of monarchy.

Did you know that the 14th of July is _not_ a celebration of the storming of
the Bastille? It is actually celebrating the 14th of July 1790, the Fête de la
Fédération, a pacific celebration of the French nation.

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cmdkeen
Or it has its origins in both. Especially as the Fête de la Fédération was the
commemoration the year after the storming of the Bastille.

It might help were the 14th not commonly referred to as Bastille day and
feature a military parade.

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dudul
Try to call it Bastille Day in France, nobody would have a clue what you're
talking about.

The parade started in 1880, and was a political move after the defeat of 1870.
Today it's a diplomatic event, foreign corps are invited, as well as heads of
state.

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ameen
Such injustice. Who knows what else he had on his mind before he was
decapitated.

Bias does no one any good. He was punished only because of his social standing
and profession. He did no ill towards his fellow frenchmen yet was butchered
to satiate their hatred towards the "elite".

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pfortuny
Not the only one to die just because, in those times.

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SeldomSoup
The French Revolution saw so much bloodshed for so little change (for the
ordinary people at least).

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jacquesm
I agree it was a lot of bloodshed but eventually the change was huge. France
is still by far the most socialist country in Western Europe.

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mercurial
The major impact was the rise of national identities following the
revolutionary wars and Napoleonic conquests. The same population who took part
in the Terror voted happily for noted autocrat Napoleon, then lived under
kings of various levels of mediocrity, briefly under a Republic before
electing the then-President Emperor (because that turned out so well the first
time), before returning to a Republican regime after being beaten by Bismark.
The current blend of social democracy (though less and less social these days)
has little in the way of direct filiation with the original French Revolution.

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jacquesm
France never reverted to the kind of excesses that the set of Royalty at the
time of the French revolution practiced.

And yes, you're right the effect wasn't a direct one but it definitely became
part of the DNA of France. For instance the role of the church before and
after the revolution are tremendously different and aristocracy never managed
to get the same strong grip on France as it did before.

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Natsu
Most developed places never practiced the same excesses, though... other than
the Communist countries, at least.

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mercurial
I think you misread parent. You seem to refer to the excesses of the French
revolution, not of the French monarchy. It's true that France would not know
the same kind of mass executions all over the country again, but it would
exert occasionally a ferocious repression during its wars (eg, in Spain during
the Napoleonic Wars) or in its colonies (eg, the massacres in French Algeria
just after the end of WWII).

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Natsu
No, I was referring to the excesses of the monarchy. I think North Korea is
one example of a Communist country that has gone above and beyond any ancient
monarchy with its terrible mix of poverty, starvation, exploitation there. And
it's still going that way even today.

