Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze - Contributions To Chemistry

Contributions To Chemistry

Paulze accompanied Lavoisier in his lab during the day, making entries into his lab notebooks and sketching diagrams of his experimental designs. The training she had received from the painter Jacques-Louis David allowed her to accurately and precisely draw experimental apparatuses, which ultimately helped many of Lavoisier’s contemporaries to understand his methods and results. Furthermore, she served as the editor of his reports. Together, the Lavoisiers rebuilt the field of chemistry, which had its roots in alchemy and at the time was a convoluted science dominated by George Stahl’s theory of phlogiston.

In the eighteenth century the idea of phlogiston (a fire-like element which is gained or released during a material’s combustion) was used to describe the apparent property changes that substances exhibited when burned. Paulze, being a master in the English, Latin and French language, was able to translate various works about phlogiston into French for her husband to read. Perhaps her most important translation was that of Richard Kirwan's essay 'Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids' (see google books), which she both translated and critiqued, adding footnotes as she went along and pointing out errors in the chemistry made throughout the paper. She also translated works by Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, and others for Lavoisier’s personal use. This was an invaluable service to Lavoisier, who relied on Paulze’s translation of foreign works to keep abreast of current developments in chemistry. In the case of phlogiston, it was Paulze’s translation that convinced him the idea was incorrect, ultimately leading to his studies of combustion and his discovery of oxygen gas.

Paulze was also instrumental in the 1789 publication of Lavoisier’s Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which presented a unified view of chemistry as a field. This work proved pivotal in the progression of chemistry, as it presented the idea of conservation of mass as well as a list of elements and a new system for chemical nomenclature. Paulze contributed thirteen drawings that showed all the laboratory instrumentation and equipment used by the Lavoisiers in their experiments. She also kept strict records of the procedures followed, lending validity to the findings Lavoisier published.