Book to Note

Marco Beretta, editor. Lavoisier in Perspective. Munich: Deutsches Museum, 2005. 213 pp. €24.80.

Reviewed by Claus Priesner

When Lavoisier was inducted into the Deutsches Museum’s Hall of Fame in 2003 (the museum’s centennial year), he was the first non-German scientist to be so honored. This excellent volume, edited by well-known historian of chemistry Marco Beretta, collects lectures from a celebratory symposium that examined the important role of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier in the development of modern chemistry and reviewed Lavoisier’s legacy over the last two centuries, especially in France and Germany. Perhaps the most interesting contribution is Johann Peter Prinz’s description of Lavoisier’s experimental method in his research on human respiration. This section discusses a series of experiments and an apparatus designed by Lavoisier to test oxygen consumption by a person resting or working. The very idea of such an investigation was possible only after Lavoisier had developed his new theory of oxidation and could envision his living subject as part of a chemical-mechanical process.