Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell's enthralling narrative reads like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry--a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin--also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.