Tag: science

Mar 18 2012

Book Review: Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant

DecodingtheHeavens“Decoding the Heavens” by Jo Marchant is the story of the Antikythera Mechanism, a mechanical astronomical calculator dating from around 100BC which predicts the motions of heavenly bodies including the sun, moon and various planets. The best way to understand how the device worked is through videos relating to this book (here) and, rather more slickly (here).

The Antikythera Mechanism was recovered off the coast of the island which provides its name in 1900. The wreck from which it was recovered was also carrying a large number of impressive bronze and marble statues, for example the Antikythera Ephebe. It is believed it was sailing from the Asia Minor coast to Rome, carrying the spoils of war. The wreck lies at a depth of 60 metres which is deep for the technology available at the time, the distinctive metal-helmeted diving suit. It was discovered by the crew of Captain Krontos, who were sponge-divers. As such they did a very risky job, Marchant reports that between 1886 and 1910 around 10,000 divers died from the bends and a further 20,000 were paralysed.

Once they had discovered the wreck they reported it to the Greek government who organised the salvage operation, at the time it was one of the first marine archaeological salvages – it was preceded  in 1884 by a speculative operation in the straits of Salamis which had recovered little. By the 1950s hundreds of wrecks were known in the Mediterranean. Marchant states that this is the first ever attempt to salvage artefacts from a sunken ship, I’m sceptical of this claim – it’s only true for very narrow definitions of each word – Edmond Halley, for example, had a company offering to salvage treasure from sunken ships in the 1690s.

It is curious how little regarded the Anthikythera Mechanism has been over the hundred or so years since its discovery. A measure of this is that the Athens National Museum, where it is kept, were still finding bits of it in 2005! This re-discovery is in some sense understandable, the Mechanism presents a rather unassuming appearance when compared to the statues with which it was found furthermore curating appears to have sharpened its act up over the years. A second reason is that it almost has the air of a fake about it, no other mechanism of comparable complexity was known until around 1000AD, and there was little written evidence for the existence of such devices.

The book works through the interpretation of the mechanism chronologically by researcher, starting with the initial interpretations made by John Svoronos and Pericles Rediadis (1903), Konstantin Rados (1905), Albert Rehm (1907) and John Theophanidis (1934). These are covered quite briefly. These initial studies were based on an exterior view of the fragments and small amounts of visible text, of which more became visible as cleaning attempts were made. It’s worth highlighting here that the mechanism was covered in text, both labels and operating instructions although originally little of this text was discernable. From these studies the mechanism was related to astronomical equipment such as the astrolabe, but was clearly different since it had a more complex clockwork-like mechanism. This chronological approach means that the reader gets a fragmented view of the device (with reverses in interpretation), as the story unfolds. There is also a degree of dramatisation of the story (e.g. “Shit,” said Roger Hadland) scattered through the book, I must admit to finding these rather grating but they are relatively sparse.

After the initial investigations there was a hiatus, with interest appearing to restart in the 1950s possibly spurred by a visit by Jacque Cousteau to the wreck in 1953. Derek De Solla Price was the next to attempt an analysis aided by x-ray imaging of the mechanism which was not available in earlier times. Price was Professor of the History of Science at Yale, in addition to his work on the Antikythera Mechanism he also did early work on scientometrics and the Japanese atomic bomb effort. He finally published his analysis in “Gears from the Greeks” in 1974, this included a detailed description of how the mechanism might have operated based on the gearing made visible by x-ray imaging.

The next attempt at a reconstruction was made by Michael Wright, originally curator of the engineering collection at the Science Museum in work starting in the early 1980s. He was joined by Allan G Bromley, a computer scientist and historian who was also involved in the reconstruction of the the Babbage. They quickly realised that Price’s theoretical reconstruction was in places somewhat creative. Wright ultimately produced a physical reconstruction of the mechanism over a period of 20 or so years.

Most recently, commencing in around 1998) there has been a collaboration led by Mike Edmunds at Cardiff University (The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project). They were able to bring to bear better x-ray tomography which was even able to reveal the details of inscriptions inside the accreted masses of the mechanism fragments, alongside Polynomial Texture Mapping, a photographic technique utilising multiple lighting angles and reconstruction to provide maximum information from surface markings. With collaborators at the Athens Nation Museum they also had access to an additional major fragment which had recently been discovered. Their work was published in the journal Nature (here in 2006 and here in 2008).

The comparison between the Wright and Edmunds collaborations is intriguing, in terms of scientific prestige the Edmunds collaboration have published on the mechanism in Nature the premier general science journal. They are a large collaboration with the best equipment, and fit well within the conventional scientific context. Wright, and to a lesser extent Bromley, were different. Wright in particular comes over has being very hard done by in the process, working in his spare time on the mechanism, always apparently “junior” to Bromley (the formal academic) and ultimately being pipped to glory by the Edmunds collaboration. His story comes through because Marchant has clearly interviewed many of the participants, rather than relying on the published literature. From the point of view of the published literature, all that is really visible to the scientific world, Wright’s efforts were virtually invisible until long after he had started work on the Mechanism.

The “problem” for the earliest interpreters of the mechanism is that it was so utterly different from anything else available from the period. There were no other clockwork like devices and few mentions of them, indeed the next instances were thought to be around 1000AD – it looks like the Antikythera Mechanism was dropped into the past from elsewhere. Nowadays it can be seen that this isn’t true. Archimedes and Ctesibius had been making complex mechanical devices in the 3rd century BC, although there are no physical remnants and the written records are sparse. On the other side, mechanisms of this type were in existence through to 1000AD and from then clocks appeared very rapidly suggesting a pre-existing store of knowledge.

In ancient Greece it is believed there were hundreds of thousands of bronze statues, the number left today are in the hundreds, at most. What chance even a few hundred rather unassuming objects to survive? As for the written record, what survives from the period has been repeatedly transcribed to suit the prevailing conditions, and they did not seek detailed descriptions of recondite mechanics. Can you lay your hands on the blue prints for an NMR machine?

The Antikythera Mechanism would have been made on the basis of the astronomical observations of the Babylonians who preceded its Greek makers. They had no “mechanical” model of the motions of the stars but they had a long, deep observational record of their movements. I’m interested in the night sky, and I can’t tell you but the details of the phases of the moon, even where it rises and sets let alone the motions of other planets are a mystery to me in the intuitive sense (I know I can look them up). The ancients had little to do at night, other than look at the sky – I feel I’ve lost something through having so many distractions and a night sky obscured by light pollution.

Footnotes

My Evernote on the book contains page by page comments, and also some links to related material

Jan 04 2012

Book Review: The First American by H.W. Brands

first_americanBenjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is someone who has crossed the paths of a number of protagonists in books I have read on the history of science, including Antoine  Lavoiser, Joseph Banks and the Lunar Society. I thought I should read something on the man himself: “The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” by H.W. Brands.

Franklin trained as a printer, as an apprentice to his brother. This was a route into learning since he got to read a lot, interacted with learned men and also started writing, when his brother launched a newspaper in their hometown of Boston – one of the early campaigns of this newspaper was against vaccination for smallpox. In the later years of his life he set up a printing press at his residence at the edge of Paris. Franklin ran away to Philadelphia before his apprenticeship finished, making his first trip to England to learn more of his trade with the (moral if not financial) support of the governor of Pennsylvania. This is another example, like Edmond Halley, of rather precocious responsibility which was not so unusual at the time. It turns out the publication of almanacs was lucrative, as was his printing work for the Pennsylvania Assembly. By the 1750s, only in his forties, he was able to step back from his business and carry on earning a good income from it. His trade as a printer seems to me important in honing his writing skills and getting his opinions out in the public domain.

I picked upon Benjamin Franklin primarily for his work as a “scientist”. The first substantial mentions of science in this book come around 1743, it is at this point he founds the American Philosophical Society and does work on a more efficient stove (which he refuses to patent), although in 1726 he is found making observations of a lunar eclipse on his return trip from England. This suggests a scientific turn of mind from a relatively young age. A few years later he is doing original and well-regarded work on electricity, as well as recommending the use of pointy lightning conductors (of great practical importance). He did some work relating a little to my own field: the spreading of oil and water as well as evaporative cooling, the Gulf Stream and some earlier thoughts on meteorology (this seems to strike a cord with some later proposals by Erasmus Darwin).

When Franklin was born Pennsylvania was in the hands of the Penn family, known as the proprietors – other states were controlled directly by the Crown via Royal governors. For much of his life Franklin considered himself to be British but by the end, the United States of America had become a newly minted nation with Franklin a pivotal figure in its creation. I suspect the causes of the War of Independence are the subject of many books. The battle cry of “no taxation without representation” has taken popular hold as a motivation, although at the time the British living in Britain were taxed with not very much representation, this taxation cause is certainly the theme that Brands follows. Also relevant was colonial support for the British in battles against the French, for which they felt little gratitude and that the British gave up in diplomacy much of that which they had paid for in blood. Ineptness on the part of the British political establishment and George III also plays a large part. Franklin’s part in the War of Independence is played politically in London in the run-up to the war, in France during the war – to garner their support, and finally in Philadelphia where he is heavily involved in the creation of the United States of America.

Throughout his life Franklin was a civic activist, a community politician, setting up the Junto (something of the character of the Lunar Society) and the American Philosophical Society (more like the Royal Society). He also founded fire brigades, a Library Company, an academy and a militia. In a sense the United States of America were the culmination of this civic activity.

For much of the last 25 or so years of his life, from 1757,  Franklin was resident in either London or Paris. In London as a representative of the Pennsylvania assembly to the British state, and in Paris similar when their help was sought in the war against the British. He appears to have fitted well into high society, and been exceptionally highly regarded in both countries. No doubt this is in part due to the formal position he held but prior to his arrival he was known in both cities via his interactions with learned societies (the Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences). He strongly considered staying the rest of his life in London, which is odd since his wife was unwilling to join him there.

In the same way that Poirier’s biography of Lavoisier introduced me to the French Revolution, this book on Franklin has introduced me to the American War of Independence. It’s like sneaking vegetables into a child by hiding them in something they like!

Footnotes

My Evernotes on this book can be found here.

Oct 20 2011

Book review: Edmond Halley Charting the Heavens and the Seas by Alan Cook

EdmondHalleyEdmond Halley (1656-1742) was one of the key figures in the early history of the Royal Society. He is best known for predicting the return of his eponymous comet but over-shadowed by contemporaries such as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren and Samuel Pepys. The biography I review here is “Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas” by Alan Cook.

Cook divides Halley’s life into three phases:

  • His early life including trips to St Helena (1677-78) to compile the first comprehensive star catalogue of the southern hemisphere; a visit to Danzig to establish the accuracy of Johann Hevelius’ star catalogue (1679), along with further travel to visit astronomers in France and Italy. This phase culminates in the publication of Newton’s Principia (1687), which Halley paid for and managed.
  • In a second phase Halley is found making two tours of the Atlantic (1698-1700), venturing to the very far south, with a view to establishing the longitudes (in particular) of various locations and measuring meterological and magnetic properties as he goes. He does this on the request of the king, as a member of the Navy. Subsequently he is sent to the Adriatic Sea (1703) to survey various potential naval bases for the English Navy. He also conducts a survey of tides in the English Channel (1701), following an earlier survey of the approaches to the Thames (1689)  and is involved in diving operations on the wrecked frigate Guiney to salvage its cargo (1691), inventing a diving bell and diving suit for the purpose. He is also Deputy to Newton at the Chester Mint (1696-97), which was created along with four other country mints for the Great Recoinage.
  • Finally he becomes Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University in 1704 where he prepares a translation of Apollonius’s Conics – a classical text on geometry. After John Flamsteed dies (1720), Halley takes his place as Astronomer Royal at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. a post he holds until his death aged 85 in 1742.

The striking thing about the first phase of his life is the degree of responsibility and the quality of his connections at an early stage in his life. He goes to St Helena at the age of 20, breaking his study as an undergraduate at Oxford, with the blessing of both the Royal Society and Charles II; Cook comments that this responsibility at an early age is not exceptional at the time but the degree of high level support is notable. On his return the king directs the university to award him a degree. Following this, at the age of 23, he goes to Danzig to make measurements with Johann Hevelius (1611-1687) at the behest of the Royal Society to check out how Hevelius makes his measurements (he uses so-called open sights, rather than the more recently invented telescopic sights) and the Society wishes to know if his claimed accuracy is reasonable. This is a pretty delicate task for a young man!

On his return from Europe he works with Newton on the publication of Principia. Prior to Principia astronomy is about data collection and classification, after Principia there is a theory that will tie all of these data together (even if the calculations are not trivial)  based on the core idea of universal gravitation attraction following an inverse square law. Halley funds the publication of the book, and is responsible for the printing, along the way learns the contents inside-out which he will later apply to the orbits of comets and the motions of the moon. In a way Halley’s prediction of the return of a comet is the proof of Newton’s theory: at the time comets were rather mysterious it was not clear at the time that they were bodies that orbited the sun but by applying Newton’s theory Halley could predict the return of a comet (everyone knew that the planets were in orbits, even if they didn’t know why).

It’s during this time Halley falls out with John Flamsteed (1646-1719) with whom he had been familiar since the creation of the Royal Observatory and Flamsteed’s appointment as Astronomer Royal. The core of the problem seems to be Halley passing on Flamsteed’s data to Newton for his calculations in Principia. Flamsteed later makes everyone he feels is in the Newton camp his enemy, maybe I need to read a sympathetic biography of Flamsteed!

The creation of the Astronomer Royal and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, along with Halley’s government funded and mandated trips around the Atlantic mark the start of scientific endeavours funded by the government. Prior to this great programmes of observation such as those by Tycho Brahe and Johann Hevelius are essentially the enthusiasms of wealthy amateurs – they die with their masters. For problems such as the determination of longitude there is a need for extended programmes of observation whose results are available to all. In a sense the clash between John Flamsteed and everyone else represents the birthing pains of this switch, he kept “his” measurements close to his chest and was monumentally reluctant to publish them. This is someone who adopts a lifelong program of detailed measurements who, naturally, will collide massively with someone like Halley, who although he undertook such a program late in his life and was a competent observer in his own right, was much more an aggregator of data from other people.

During his life Halley was respected as one of the leading European mathematicians, a reputation which hasn’t really maintained. I feel this is a little unfair, Halley’s strength was in compiling data on, for example, cometary orbits from a range of sources including other contemporary observers, his own measurements and historical sources. He then applies the most recent theory of the time to make future predictions – most famously of the return of his eponymous comet. He also devises the program of measurement for the transits of Venus and Mercury, which are conducted on James Cook’s mission after Halley’s death, these are used to determine the size of the solar system. (The key parameter to be measured is simply the length of the transit, rather than the absolute time of its start and end). This process of turning theory, in this case Newton’s theory of gravitation, into practical application is critical but less well recognised than the “original seed”. In contrast to Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin, who were passengers on Royal Navy ships, Halley is master and commander – he has a full Navy commission and salary and is a competent seaman.

Halley’s work on geomagnetism and trade winds is also notable – he publishes the first known examples of “isoclines” to visualise his data – and he makes use of a wide range of measurements from right across the globe. In fact as a classical scholar he also investigates historical data which he incorporates into this work and other independent investigations.

halley_isoline_1701

One longstanding project is the understanding of the motion of the moon, it is relevant because if the location of the moon relative to the fixed stars can be calculated in the future then the moon can be used as a clock to determine the longitude: a grand challenge of the time. As Astronomer Royal Halley sought to record the motion of the moon over the 18 year “saronic” cycle, this is the period over which the moon’s orbit repeats. The results of these observations are not published until after his death.

On subjects such as tides, the magnetic field of the earth, calculations of lunar locations, geomagnetism, the source of the aurora Halley is often producing results that are not bettered for a hundred or so years. 

Halley strikes me as an early version of Joseph Banks, someone with significant scientific reputation but also someone who can be relied on to competently complete difficult tasks – they share a little more in the sense that it is Banks who helps conduct the transit of Venus measurements in Tahiti that Halley described many years before. It also plays to the idea that, at the time, there were no professional scientists such as there are today, the 17th century model is equivalent to a cabinet minister who wins a Nobel prize for physics.

Alan Cook’s book feels very complete in it’s treatment of the source material, in several places he repeats tables of original measurements and covers some of the mathematics in some depth, the appendices contain yet more detail. However, Halley left nothing in the way of a diary or of personal correspondence so Halley as a person does not come through except by his public actions.

Footnotes

If you’re interested these are the notes I made in Evernote as I read (link)

Sep 22 2011

Book review: Ingenious Pursuits by Lisa Jardine

IngeniousPursuits““Ingenious Pursuits” by Lisa Jardine is the second book I have recently recovered from my shelves, first read long ago – the first being “The Lunar Men”. The book covers the late 17th and early 18th century, and is centred around members of the Royal Society in London but branching out from this group. It is divided thematically, with segues between each chapter.

My edition is illustrated with Joseph Wright of Derby’s “An experiment on a bird in the air pump”, painted in 1768. As a developing historical pedant this mismatch in dates has been irritating me!

The book opens with a chapter on Isaac Newton, the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley and the comet which would eventually take Halley’s name. It’s also an early example of an argument over “open data”, Flamsteed was exceedingly reluctant to give “his” data on the motions of planets to Newton to use in his calculations. Halley is pivotal in this, not so much through the scientific work he did, but through his work as a conduit between the prickly Newton and Flamsteed.

Robert Hooke features strongly in the second chapter alongside Robert Boyle; Hooke had originally been the wealthy Boyle’s pet experimenter – in particular he was operator for the “air pump”, a temperamental device for evacuating a glass vessel. The early Royal Society recognising his skills, persuaded Boyle to allow them to take him on as Curator of Experiments for the Society. Hooke was also involved with Christopher Wren in surveying London after The Great Fire, and designing many of the new buildings. In fact they also designed buildings with one eye to fitting experiments into them, particularly ones requiring a long uninterrupted drop. One sometimes gets the impression of a highly industrious Hooke implementing the vague imaginings of a series of aristocratic Society members. The constant battles with temperamental equipment will ring a bell with many a modern scientist. Robert Hooke is a central character throughout the book, Lisa Jardine has written a biography of him.

Hooke was also responsible for Micrographia a beautiful volume of images observed principally through a microscope, of insects and plants. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch civil servant and microscopist also supplied his microscopic observations to the Royal Society. It’s interesting that both Leeuwenhoek and later Jan Swammerdam, both based in the Netherlands, were very keen to communicate their results to the Royal Society in London. Interactions with the academiciens in Paris were more formal with another Dutchman, Christian Huygens, a central figure in the French group. Scientific discovery was already a highly international operation.

This was a period in which serious large scale surveying was first undertaken, the French started their great national survey under Cassini. The British, under the direction of Sir Jonas Moore, set up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where Flamsteed was employed. Timekeeping was a part of this surveying operation. Finding the latitude, how far you are between equator and pole, is relatively straightforward; finding your longitude – where you are East-West direction is far more difficult. One strategy is to use time: the earth turns at a fixed rate and as it does the sun appears to move through the sky. You can use this behaviour to fix a local noon time: the time at which the sun reaches the highest point in the sky. If, when you measure your local noon, you can also determine what time it is at some reference point Greenwich, for example, then you can find your longitude from the difference between the two times.

To establish the time at your reference point you can either use the heavens as a clock, one method is the timing of the eclipses of the inner moon of Jupiter (Io with a period of 1.8 days), or you can use a mechanical clock. In fact it’s from observations of these eclipses that the first experimental indications of a finite speed of light were identified by Ole Rømer. In the late 17th century the mechanical clock route was starting to become plausible: the requirement is to construct a timepiece which keeps accurate time over long sea journeys, at the equator (the worst case) a degree of longitude is 60 nautical miles and is equivalent to 4 minutes in time. Christian Huygens and Robert Hooke were both producing advances in horology, and would be in (acrimonious) dispute over the invention of the spring driven clock for some time. Huygens’ introduction of the pendulum clock in 1656 produced a huge improvement in accuracy, from around 15 minutes in a day to 15 seconds following further refinement of the original mechanism.

Ultimately the mechanical clock method would win out but only in the second half of the 18th century.This astronomical navigation work was immensely important to nations such as Britain, French and the Netherlands who would even collaborate over measurements in periods when they were pretty much at war. Astronomy wasn’t funded for “wow” it was funded for “where”.

Also during this period there was a growing enthusiasm for collecting things. At the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Hendrik Adriaan Van Reede was to start adding more native plants to the local botanic garden on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch built their commercial horticulture tradition in this period. In France, botany was only second to astronomy in the money it received from the Academie des Sciences. Again, plants were not collected for fun but for trade. In England Sir Hans Sloane was to start collecting; bringing chocolate back from the West Indies, which he marketed as milk chocolate, popular alongside another exotic botanical product: coffee. He was also to bring back the embalmed body of his employer for the trip, the Duke of Albemarle. Sloane was to continue collecting throughout his life, absorbing the collections of others by purchase or bequest – his collection was to go on to form the foundation of the British Museum collection. In Oxford Elias Ashmole, of Ashmolean Museum fame, was to acquire the collection of the planthunter John Tradescant under rather murky circumstances. The collectors of the time were somewhat indiscriminate and not particularly skilled at organising their rather personally driven collections. In their defence though there was no good taxonomy at the time so raw collecting was a start.

The final thematic chapter is largely about medicine, at the time medicine was in a pretty woeful state. Over the preceding years advances had been made in describing the structure of the human body and William Harvey had identified a function: the circulation of blood. However fixing it when it went wrong was not a strength at that time: surgeons “cutting for the stone” were becoming quite agile but there were few reliable drugs and a wide range of positively unhelpful practices.

The book finishes with an epilogue drawing parallels between the discovery of the structure of DNA, and the intense personal story around it, with the interactions between the people discussed previously at the heart of this book. There is also a “Cast of Characters” which provides a handy overview of the book (should I forget its contents again). Compared to The Lunar Men it is an easier read perhaps because it is more discursive around themes rather than providing great detail.

Footnote

My Evernotes on this book are here

May 07 2011

Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist by Jean-Pierre Poirier

Lavoisier

Recently I read Vivian Grey’s biography of Lavoisier. Although a fine book, it left me wanting more Lavoisier, so I turned to Jean-Pierre Poirier’s more substantial biography: “Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist”. Related is my blog post on the French Académie des Sciences, of which Lavoisier was a long term member, and senior, member.

This is a much longer, denser book than that of Grey, with commonality of subject it’s unsurprising that the areas covered are similar. However, Poirier spends relatively more time discussing Lavoisier’s activities as a senior civil servant and as an economist.

The striking thing is the collection of roles that Lavoisier had: senior member of Ferme Générale (commissioned Paris wall), director of the Académie, director of the Gunpowder and Saltpeter Administration, owner and manager of his own (agricultural) farms. It’s difficult to imagine a modern equivalent, the governor of the Bank of England running a research lab? Or perhaps an MP with a minor ministerial post, running a business and a research lab? In practical terms he did experimental work for a few hours each morning and evening (6-9am, 7-10pm) and on Saturdays – having a number of assistants working with him.

Lavoisier was wealthy, inheriting $1.8million* from relatives as an 11 year old he joined the Ferme Générale with an initial downpayment of about $3million. However, this provided an income of something like $2.4-4.8 million a year. On a trip to Strasbourg as a 24 year old, he spent $20,000 on books – which you have to respect. As the collector of taxes levied on the majority but not the nobility or clergy, the Ferme Générale was one of the institutions in the firing line when the Revolution came. Wealthy financiers, such as Lavoisier, bought stakes in these private companies, provided exclusive rights by the King, and made enormous rates of return (15-20%), at the same time serving the Kings needs rather poorly.

As for his activities in chemistry, Poirier provides a a good background to the developments going on at the time. Beyond what I have read before, it’s clear that Lavoisier does not make any of the first discoveries of for example, oxygen, carbon dioxide or nitrogen, nor of the understanding that combustion results in weight gain. But what he does do is build a coherent theory that brings all of these things together and overthrows the phlogiston theory of combustion. With Guyton de Morveau he develops a new, systematic, way of naming chemicals which is still used today and, as a side effect, embeds his ideas about combustion. It’s from this work that the first list of elements is produced. Furthermore, Lavoisier sees the applications of the idea of oxidation in explaining “chemical combustion” as entirely appropriate for understanding “biological combustion” or respiration. In a sense he sets the scheme for biochemistry which does not come to life for nearly 100 years, for want of better experimental methodology.

It’s interesting that gases are arguably the most difficult materials to work with yet it is their study, in particular understanding the components of air, which leads to an understanding of elements, and the “new chemistry”. Perhaps this is because gases are their own abstraction, there is nothing to see only things to measure.

The book also gives a useful insight into the French Revolution for someone who would not read the history for its own sake. The heart of the Revolution was a taxation system that exempted the nobility and the clergy from paying anything, and a large state debt from supporting the American War of Independence. Spending appears to have been decided by the nobility, or even just the King, with little regard as to how the money was raised. At one point Paris considered an aqueduct to bring in fresh water to all its citizens, but then decided that rebuilding the opera house was more important! The Revolution was a rather more drawn out than I appreciated with Lavoisier at the heart of the ongoing transformation at the time of his execution during the Terror, only to be lauded once again a couple of years later as Robbespierre fell from power and was executed in his turn.

On economics: Lavoisier was one of the directors of the French Discount Bank, during the Revolution he was involved in plans for a constitutional monarchy and amongst the ideas he brought forward was for what would essentially be an “Office for National Statistics”. The aim being to collect data on production and so forth across the economy in support of economic policy. This fits in with the mineral survey work he carried at the very beginning of his career and also on his work in “experimental farming”. Economic policy at the time alternating between protectionism (no wheat exports) and free-markets (wheat exports allowed), with many arguing that agriculture was the only economically productive activity.

It’s tempting to see Lavoisier’s scientific and economic programmes being linked via the idea of accounting: in chemistry the counting of amounts of material into and out of a reaction and in economics counting the cash into and out of the economy.

Definitely a book I would recommend! It’s remarkable just how busy Lavoisier was in a range of areas, and the book also provides a handy insight into the French Revolution for those more interested in science. I wondering whether Benjamin Franklin should be my next target.

Footnote

*These are equivalences to 1996 dollars, provided in the book, they should be treated with caution.