Western Culture Global Presents The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness. #46: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) is a father of modern chemistry. His great accomplishments in chemistry largely stem from the fact that he changed the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. He is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen and hydrogen and disproved the phlogiston theory, which was universally accepted in his time. He also wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass. He showed nature is a closed system in which, although matter can change its state in a chemical reaction, the quantity of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical change. In other words, he proved that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Modern chemistry, which Lavoisier helped establish, greatly contributes to the modern world’s unprecedented ability to sustain and enrich human life. Go to #47: Alexander Fleming Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category
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