Marie-Anne participated in Antoine’s scientific work by assisting him in the laboratory and in his correspondence, hosting learned gentlemen and ladies from abroad in her salon, and by translating scholarly work in other languages into French and illustrating scientific books. There is much more to their story, though. In a famous painting, Lavoisier is depicted with his wife, Marie-Anne: he’s at work, and she poses as his muse. Although not all of these are considered elements today, the era of the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – was definitely over. Lavoisier also established the concept of a chemical element as a simple substance – one that could not be decomposed during chemical analysis – and presented a table of 33 elements. In Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787), Lavoisier and his collaborators gave new, systematic names to all known elements and created a set of rules for naming compounds, which are still valid today. Central to this was the French aristocrat Antoine Lavoisier. The reformation of chemistry that took place in France in the 1780s is often celebrated as the beginning of modern chemistry. 18th century Marie-Anne Lavoisier and the new notion of the chemical element Portrait of Marie-Anne and As a counterpoint to this tendency, in this International Year of the Periodic Table w1 we look at the stories of several women scientists whose work significantly contributed to our knowledge of the elements of the periodic table. The history of any scientific field is often told from the point of view of the main concepts and theories, ignoring the experimental work and unexpected observations that led to this theoretical understanding – and it is this relatively neglected aspect to which many women made major contributions. The story of the periodic table and its elements started long before 1869, however – as did the participation of women in this communal venture. Mendeleev’s system has proved to be robust to new developments in science, from the discovery of noble gases and radioactive elements to the world of quantum physics, and it has now reached its 150th anniversary. Behind this system was Mendeleev’s idea of a periodic law: a law of nature demonstrating regularities among the elements.

In March 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev presented his periodic system to the Russian Academy of Sciences ( Gordin, 2004). Author(s): Annette Lykknes, Brigitte Van Tiggelenįind out how women scientists contributed to knowledge of the chemical elements – and what this tells us about the nature of scientific work, then and now.

Elements table