G.-F. Rouelle: An Eighteenth-Century Chemist and Teacher

Abstract

It is frequently true in the history of science that the figures to excite the most interest are those in whom distinct signs of “modernity” are apparent. Until a short time ago this generalization could be applied in all its force to the field of the history of chemistry and the results are well known: the precursors of Lavoisier, the “founder” of modern chemistry, were left unstudied and were relegated to an unenlightened age in the history of a relatively new science. But it is to ignore the continuity of history to believe that chemistry was born de novo at the end of the eighteenth century. Studies of Lavoisier’s predecessors, such men as Mayow, Hales, Black, and Bayen, have only recently contributed to a better understanding of the origins of the Chemical Revolution.