Antoine Lavoisier

Hello! My name is Antoine Lavoisier. I was born a very long time ago, in the year 1743, in a beautiful city called Paris. I was a scientist, which means I loved to ask questions! I had a special room in my house called a laboratory. It was my favorite place! It was filled with shiny glass bottles, long tubes, and special scales to weigh things. I loved doing experiments to figure out how the world works. My wonderful wife, Marie-Anne, was my best helper. She would draw pretty pictures of my experiments and help me write down everything we learned together.

I had a big, big question. I wanted to know, what makes things burn? I watched candles flicker and logs crackle in the warm fireplace. I did a special experiment in my lab. In the year 1777, I found out that fire needs a special, invisible part of the air to burn. It was like a secret ingredient! I was so excited that I gave this secret ingredient a name. I called it oxygen. I also discovered that when oxygen mixes with another gas, called hydrogen, they make something you drink every day—water!

I lived to be 50 years old, and I spent my life asking questions and searching for answers. Today, people call me the 'Father of Modern Chemistry' because of all the things I figured out. Every time you take a big breath of fresh air, you're breathing in the oxygen I helped name. And every time you drink a cool glass of water, you can remember that I discovered what it was made of. Isn't science amazing?