Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (Great Discoveries) - Hardcover

Bell, Madison Smartt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393051552 ISBN 13: 9780393051551

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

Synopsis

Presents an account of the work of Enlightenment-era scientist Antoine Lavoisier, whose tireless efforts to define and explain chemical processes resulted in the establishment of a chemical language still in use today.

About this title

About the Author:

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of twelve novels, his most recent being the final volume of his Haiti trilogy, The Stone That the Builder Refused. He teaches in Goucher College's Creative Writing Program and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

From Booklist:

The dramatic story of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) is a tale of revolution, the perfect subject for Bell, author of a trilogy of powerful novels about the Haitian revolution. Bell's classy and instructive contribution to the superb Great Discoveries series portrays a visionary who freed chemistry from its alchemical roots, helped establish the practice of systematic experimentation, and isolated and named oxygen. These -paradigm-altering feats were made possible by the fortune Lavoisier accrued as a tax collector and used to build uniquely precise laboratory equipment, but triumph was followed by catastrophe as his governmental appointment made him an enemy of the people once the French Revolution was under way. Writing with equal panache about scientific breakthroughs and social upheaval, Bell shares his fascination with how Lavoisier launched a "chemical revolution" as his enemy, the "firebrand journalist and provocateur" Jean-Paul Marat, plotted his downfall. Bell portrays Lavoisier and his gifted wife with admiration and empathy as he reflects on the tragic irony of how a brilliant scientist devoted to reason was executed in a maelstrom of rage and madness. Donna Seaman
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393051552
• ISBN 13: 9780393051551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214