Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution) was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both chemistry and the history of biology. He is the "Father of modern chemistry". Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry largely stem from his changing the science from a qualitative one. He is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He is recognized and named oxygen and hydrogen and opposed the phlogiston theory. He helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He also predicted the existence of silicon and was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element rather than a compound. He discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
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