Marie Lavoisier

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Marie Lavoisier and her husband, portrait by Jacques-Louis David 1788

Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier (born January 20, 1758 in Montbrison , † February 10, 1836 in Paris ) was a chemist , illustrator and salonnière . She worked closely with her husband, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier .

Life and work

She was the daughter of Jacques Paulze (1723–1794) and Claudine Catherine Thoynet De Rozières († 1761). Her father was director of the French East India Company (Directeur de la Compagnie des Indes) and general tax collector in the agricultural sector, so-called main customs lessee ( Fermier général ) . He was guillotined on May 8, 1794 . Her older brother was Christian François Joseph Paulze d'Ivoy (1755-1793).

Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze married the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier on November 16, 1771 at the age of thirteen, according to other sources on December 4, 1771. Lavoisier was then 28 years old. She was a spirited salon lady and was known as an attentive, charming and good-humored hostess (and for her kitchen) at the parties of the couple.

She worked with him on chemical experiments , in particular she often kept the laboratory notebook and created many illustrations for her husband's works. Marie Lavoisier translated Richard Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids (1787) from English into French, thereby allowing her husband to critically examine Kirwan's ideas (Lavoisier's English language skills were limited). She also learned Latin and acquired some of her chemistry skills from her husband's colleague, Jean-Baptiste-Michel Bucquet .

Drawing by Madame Lavoisier. The illustration shows her husband and she in the laboratory for his experiments on human respiration.

Jacques-Louis David portrayed the Lavoisier couple in 1788, who paid 7,000 livres for them. Marie Lavoisier also received part of her artistic training through David, the founder of classicism in France. She acquired and improved her knowledge of the graphic techniques of painting , drawing and engraving . Marie Lavoisier is said to have made a portrait of Benjamin Franklin from 1787/88; it was created by her based on a template by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802). Benjamin Franklin was a friend of the Lavoisier couple. The painting was sent by Marie Lavoisier to Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1788.

Her husband was indicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal with the other tax farmers, found guilty and beheaded on the scaffold on May 8, 1794 . All property and assets were confiscated by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Marie Lavoisier lost all earnings. When the terror (la Grande Terreur) was at its height, she too was imprisoned from June to August 1794. After her release, she was deprived of all means. The year 1795 brought the revision of the 1794 processes and the executed principal tenant tenants were rehabilitated, the property returned to the beneficiaries, in which she herself played a leading role. From then on, she was considered a good match because of her lush heritage. In 1795 she ensured that one of her husband's main persecutors, the former employee of the tax farmer Antoine Dupin, was indicted and convicted. Before the trial she tried to get Dupin to drop the charges against her husband, but lost self-control during the conversation. She harbored a grudge against many high-ranking personalities such as the former employees of her husband Antoine François de Fourcroy and Guyton de Morveau , because, in their opinion, they had not stood up for his life, although they were members of the Jacobins. In order not to face this, she also avoided an official rehabilitation ceremony for her husband in the Lycée des Arts in 1795.

The economist Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours , friend of Lavoisier and his last publisher, friend of Thomas Jefferson and father of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (founder of the DuPont company ) who emigrated to the United States , advertised her, but was rejected by her.

Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817)

On October 12, 1805, she married Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), known as Count Rumford. The marriage was not very happy; they separated in 1807 and divorced in 1810.

Benjamin Thompson (painting by Thomas Gainsborough , 1783)

During the Napoleonic era, she founded a salon in the Hotel de la rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré in Paris . She and her salon were an integral part of Paris society; it was visited regularly by leading scholars in France, including Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Pierre-Simon Laplace , Claude-Louis Berthollet , François Arago and Jean-Baptiste Biot .

She translated scientific texts for Lavoisier and, in 1805, after Lavoisier's death, published his left Mémoires de Chimie in a private print, which she distributed to selected scholars. There are memories of her husband (she provided Georges Cuvier with information, for example, for his encyclopedia article (in the biography Michaud ) about Lavoisier) published by Charles Gillispie.

literature

  • Denis Duveen: Madame Lavoisier (1758-1836) , Chymia, Volume 4, 1953, pp. 13-29.
  • Cassandra T. Eagle, Jennifer Sloan: Marie Anne Paulze Lavoisier: The Mother of Modern Chemistry. The Chemical Educator. Abstract Volume 3 Issue 5 (1998), S1430-4171 (98) 05249-8 doi : 10.1333 / s00897980249a
  • Edouard Grimaux: Lavoisier , 2nd edition, Paris 1896, pp. 35-44.
  • Madeleine Pinault-Sorensen: Madame Lavoisier, dessinatrice et peintre La revue du Musée des arts et métiers, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Musée national des techniques, March 1994, pp. 23-25, The article was published in memory of Michelle Goupil ( secrétaire général du Comité Lavoisier).
  • Claude Vie: Le salon et le laboratoire de Lavoisier à l'Arsenal, cénacle où s'élabora la nouvelle chimie , Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie, Volume 306, 1995, pp. 255-266, online at Persee

Web links

Commons : Marie Lavoisier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Genealogy of the father
  2. ↑ Genealogy of the mother
  3. ^ Brother's genealogy
  4. ↑ Ferenc Szabadváry: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. The researcher and his time 1743-1794. Budapest Joint edition of the Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest and the Wissenschaftlichen Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Stuttgart (1973), p. 32
  5. ↑ Ferenc Szabadváry: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. The researcher and his time 1743-1794. Budapest Joint edition of the Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest and the Wissenschaftlichen Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Stuttgart (1973), p. 34 ff.
  6. ↑ Portrait of Benjamin Franklin from 1788
  7. ^ Biography in English of John H. Lienhard: Marie Lavoisier. No. 1673
  8. ^ Genealogical data Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze
  9. ^ Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie: Women in Science. Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century: A Biographical Dictionary with Annotated. MIT (1990). Pp. 119-120.
  10. ↑ Jean Jacques Peumery: Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, épouse et collaboratrice de Lavoisier. M.-A. Paulze, épouse et collaboratrice de Lavoisier, Vesalius, VI, 2,105-113, (2000), p. 112 (PDF file; 169 kB)
  11. ↑ Ferenc Szabadváry: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. The researcher and his time 1743-1794. Budapest Joint edition of the Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest and the Wissenschaftlichen Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Stuttgart (1973), p. 220
  12. ^ Charles Gillispie, Notice biographique de Lavoisier par Madame Lavoisier , Revue d'histoire des sciences, Volume 9, 1956, pp. 52-61, here p. 61, digitized
personal data
SURNAME Lavoisier, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lavoisier, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1758
PLACE OF BIRTH Montbrison
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1836
Place of death Paris