Antoine Lavoisier, the 18th century French nobleman, dragged chemistry out of alchemy and into rigorous measurement, yet died on the guillotine in 1794. This episode separates the blinking-head legend from the real life of a trained lawyer who funded Europe’s most advanced laboratory through a share in the despised Ferme Générale tax syndicate.

We explore Marie-Anne Paulze’s essential role as translator, illustrator, and organizer, his sealed-vessel experiments that dismantled phlogiston theory, the naming of oxygen, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, the law of conservation of mass, his tobacco moisture rules and Paris wall, his trial and execution, and the ice calorimeter that linked respiration to combustion.

• Why the story of his blinking severed head is a modern myth
• How Marie-Anne Paulze translated, critiqued, and illustrated his work
• The sealed glass experiments that disproved phlogiston
• How the 6.3 percent tobacco water rule became evidence against him
• The guinea pig ice calorimeter and respiration as slow combustion