Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier

Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier, later Countess von Rumford, (20 January 1758 in Montbrison, Loire, France – 10 February 1836) was a French chemist and noblewoman.

Most of his income came from running the Ferme Générale (the General Farm) which was a private consortium of financiers who paid the French monarchy for the privilege of collecting certain taxes.

As her interest developed, she received formal training in the field from Jean Baptiste Michel Bucquet and Philippe Gingembre, both of whom were Lavoisier's colleagues at the time.

Despite these obstacles, Marie-Anne organized the publication of Lavoisier's final memoirs, Mémoires de Chimie, a compilation of his papers and those of his colleagues demonstrating the principles of the new chemistry.

The first volume contained work on heat and the formation of liquids, while the second dealt with the ideas of combustion, air, calcination of metals, the action of acids, and the composition of water.

In the original copy, Paulze wrote the preface and attacked revolutionaries and Lavoisier's contemporaries, whom she believed to be responsible for his death.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Before her death, Paulze was able to recover nearly all of Lavoisier's notebooks and chemical apparatuses, most of which survive in a collection at Cornell University, the largest of its kind outside of Europe.

[9] The year she died, a book was published, showing that Marie-Anne had a rich theological library with books which included versions of The Bible, St. Augustine's Confessions, Jacques Saurin's Discours sur la Bible, Pierre Nicole's Essais de Morale, Blaise Pascal's Lettres provinciales, Louis Bourdaloue's Sermons, Thomas à Kempis's De Imitatione Christi, etc.