Literatura académica sobre el tema "Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent de (1743-1794)"

This essay deals with an issue that has never before been the focus of attention in the field of research on the history of chemistry in Italy: the diffusion of Mendeleev’s periodic system in our nation. In the following text we will analyze the situation in the period preceding the arrival of Mendeleev’s theory in Italy with regard to the matter of classifying elements. By doing so, it will be possible to demonstrate that—despite the superficiality and lack of accuracy of certain studies—Italian chemistry was already very willing to consider new proposals relating to the classification of elements. We will then attempt to illustrate how Mendeleev’s work not only attracted the attention of the most renowned Italian chemists, such as Augusto Piccini and Giacomo Ciamician, but also became widely used in university texts and secondary school textbooks. In order to understand the classification criteria for elements adopted by Italian chemists before Mendeleev and therefore the cultural terrain the law of periodicity was to take root in, it would be better to refer to a number of texts used widely for teaching in universities. We will examine four of these, published between 1819 and 1867. In all these texts, the term “simple bodies” appears, with the expression “simple substances” used less frequently, while Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–94), in his 1789 Traité élémentaire de chimie (Traité thereafter), uses the same term “simple substances” or “simple substances … which may be considered as the elements of bodies.” It is interesting to note that Vincenzo Dandolo’s Italian translation (first edition 1792) uses the expression “sostanze semplici,” interpreting quite literally the Frenchman’s choice of term. Thirty years after publication of the Traité, Antonio Santagata (1774–1858), professor of general chemistry at the Pontificia Università di Bologna, published his Lezioni di chimica elementare [Lessons in elementary chemistry], derived from Lezioni di chimica elementare: applicata alla medicina e alle arti [Lessons in Elementary Chemistry: Applied to Medicine and the Arts] (Bologna, 1804), written by his predecessor in the university chair, Pellegrino Salvigni (1777–1841).

Until the mid-18th century, chemists had no understanding of the role of air in chemical changes. The Chemical Revolution was not merely conceptual, but also instrumental in that it involved the practical ability to manipulate, weigh, and measure gases using accurate balances, glass apparatus, and eudiometers. The chemist who transformed our views of elements, composition, and reorganized the way that chemists communicated was the French civil servant Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94). ‘Gases and atoms’ outlines Lavoisier’s work on chemistry nomenclature along with the key chemical discoveries by Joseph Black, Henry Cavendish, and Joseph Priestley. John Dalton’s atomic theory and the problem of ascertaining the molecular structure of water are also discussed.