Overview
Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, revolutionized chemistry in the late 1700's. He repeated many of the experiments of earlier chemists but interpreted the results far differently. Unlike earlier chemists, Lavoisier paid particular attention to the weight of the ingredients involved in chemical reactions and of the products that resulted. He found that the weight of the products of combustion equals that of the original ingredients. His discovery became known as the law of the conservation of mass (or matter).