On July 3, 1764 Jean Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) climbed the stairs in his family’s Parisian home and placed vials of gypsum to crystallize in the warmth of “mother’s little attic.” This simple act connected him to a reform movement in French mineralogy led by the philosophe Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789) and a group of academicians and savants at thePalais Royal. These reformers argued that applying chemistry to mineralogy would fulfill the Enlightenment goal of using science and technology for the benefit of the nation. Members spread their message through the Encyclopédie and translations of Swedish and German texts. Jean-Étienne Guettard (1715-1786), a long-time resident at the Palais Royal, drew on decades of field observations in his call to replace the usual method of analysis (subjecting the solid mineral to intense heat) with the analysis of minerals dissolved in water. As Guettard’s protégé, Lavoisier carried out the research program designed to emulate the ideal practice of a reformed mineralogy. Between 1765 and 1768 Lavoisier applied his newly acquired chemical knowledge to the study of minerals dissolved in water, intending to identify the component parts of minerals and understand their etiology of formation in “Nature’s laboratory.” In this paper I will illustrate that Lavoisier’s chemical work between 1764 and 1768 originated in the French effort to reform mineralogy. I will use Lavoisier’s first laboratory notebook, his manuscripts, and the memoirs he presented to the Academy to describe his research program and its place in Guettard’s scientific life cycle. I will use the Encyclopédie and contemporary mineralogy texts to demonstrate how the Baron d’Holbach and the members of the scientific entourage at the Palais Royal influenced Lavoisier’s early scientific work.

At work in “Nature’s Laboratory”: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and the chemical analysis of minerals

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