1700-1800

1728 - 1799** Discovery:1750-1752 []​
 * Joseph Black

Joseph Black was born in Bordeaux on 16 1728. He was one of 15 children. His father was John Black, an Ulster wine merchang of Scots descent based in Bordeaux while his mother, Margaret Black, was from Aberdeenshire. When Joseph Black was 12, he went to school in Belfast to learn Latin and Greek. At age 16, he enrolled at Glasgow University to study arts. After this, however, his father made him chose something more useful. He chose medicine. In 1752, Black moved to Edinburgh in 1752 to further his medical studies, but returned to Glasgow in 1756 as Professor of Anatomy and Botany,and lecturer in Chemisty. He was then appointed Professor of Medicine in Glasgow. In 1766, he succeeded Cullen to the chemistry and medicine chairs in Edinburgh. Noted for his fundamental work on latent and specific heats and for his discovery of carbon dioxide.

It is during the early Glasgow years (1750-52) that it seems Black began his work on the chemistry of "magnesia alba" (a basic magnesium carbonate), which he later submitted for his MD thesis in Edinburgh, and which includes the discovery of what we now call carbon dioxide - he called it "fixed air". These experiments involved the very first careful weight measurements on changes brought about when heating magnesia alba (with release of CO2) and reacting the products with acids or alkalis. This foreshadowed Lavoisier's work, and laid the foundation for modern chemistry.

Then in 1756, he met up with Jame Watt and they stimulated the next phase of his work involving the concept of latent heat, and the first steps in calorimetry. He also did similar work establishing the idea of latent heats of vaporization, leading to the general concept of heat capacity or specific heat. These early steps in thermodynamics went on alongside James Watt's developments of improved steam engines, and the two were in constant communication.

Antoine Lavoisier 1743-1794 Discovery:1777

[] Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born August 26, 1743, the son of a wealthy Paris family. He was from a wealthy family so he was fortunate enough to attend the college of Mazarin where he recieved a law degree which he never used. At age 21 he began to practice science and mathmatics. In 1777 Antoine discovered the element oxygen. Proof of the validity of Lavoisier's Oxygen Theory came when Lavoisier decomposed water into two gases, which he named hydrogen and oxygen, and then reformed them into water.
 * HgO(s) [[image:Arrow.gif width="41" height="9"]] Hg(l) + O **** 2(g) **



Charles Coulomb 1736-1806 Discovery:1783 ||
 * [[image:Charles_de_coulomb.jpg align="center" caption="Charles_de_coulomb.jpg"]]
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Coulomb was born in Angouleme France to a wealthy family. When Coulomb was young his family moved to Paris and there Coulomb studied at thecollege des Quatree-Nations. Coulomb returned to Paris in 1759 where he was successful in the entrance examination for the military school at Mezieres. On top of being a geat chemist and physisist Coulomb also fought for the French army. Charles i very well know for formulaing Coulomb's Law. The law states that the fundamental law of electrostatics stating that the force between two charged particles is directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This was Charles' greatest accomplishment.