Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

Besides being a versatile and talented scientist known as the father of modern chemistry, Lavoisier was also a French statesman and entrepreneur.

Born in a family of a wealthy landowner Lavoisier followed the family tradition and completed law before he dedicated himself to science. In 1768, at the age of 25, he was elected to the most prestigious scientific society in France – the Academy of Science. Using the wealth that he inherited from his mother, in 1769 he purchased an office in the Ferme Générale, the private corporation that collected taxes for the Crown on a profit-and loss-basis. In this position of a tax farmer he became compromised. Appointed a commissioner of gunpowder in 1775 responsible for overseeing the collection of excise tax, he introduced some measures which were disapproved in Paris. Particularly unpopular was his proposal to build an octroi wall around the Paris to make more efficient the collection of transit taxes on goods. With the beginning of the French revolution, this wall was a primary target of insurgents in July 1789. Although he also proposed the abolition of the corvee and the creation of an old-age fund for the poor, the memory of the octroi wall was decisive. He was guillotined on 8 May 1794.