Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier is well known as the father of modern chemistry. Lavoisier was much more than a scientist, however. He was also a successful financier, a respected economist, and an influential administrator, deeply involved in the economic and political reform of 18th-century France.

This comprehensive biography covers Lavoisier's role in French economic thought and politics as well as chemistry, and treats Marie Lavoisier as a figure in her own right.

"An impressive and fresh narrative account of the many-sided career of Lavoisier."--Frederic Holmes, Yale University