Lavoisier, The Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772

Before Henry Guerlac's book, we knew little about the reasons that led the great chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier to discover the role of air in combustion. Henry Guerlac finds that this breakthrough that began the Chemical Revolution did not come "ex nihilo," as many historians claim. Rather, it marked the culmination of research by British and French chemists, radically refashioned by Lavoisier and his disciples. Henry Guerlac portrays Lavoisier integrating Continental and British chemical traditions. Like New ton in physics and Darwin in biology, Lavoisier was a revolutionary. This work presents his in a vigorous and innovative light.