Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze

David's portrait of Marie-Anne and her husband.

This is a lady who probably needs a good biography.

Married at 13 to Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, who was known as the father of modern chemistry, she not only assisted in his laboratory but translated scientific reports from English for his benefit. Lavoisier who was appointed gunpowder administrator under the French monarch, went on among many other accomplishments to establish the finest chemical laboratory of his time, and to coin the names for oxygen and hydrogen. Marie received formal training in chemistry from Jean-Baptiste Bucquet and Philippe Gingembre. Trained as an artist by the great French artist Jacques-Louis David, she illustrated the reports of Lavoisier's research with drawings of his experiments. After Lavoisier was executed during the French Revolution, she retrieve his laboratory notes and published the final documentation of his work, Mémoires de Chimi.

She was later courted by Pierre-Samuel duPont de Nemours, economist, friend of Thomas Jefferson, founder of the American Dupont family and namesake of the Dupont Company, but married instead Benjamin Thompson. He too had an amazing life, born in Massachusetts, he served in the state militia and in the British Army, was knighted by Great Britain, served as Minister of War of Bavaria, was made "Count Rumford", and was himself a distinguished scientist (also an expert on gunpowder who invented the wax candle and did pioneering work on thermodynamics).

Two hundred years ago, her contributions to science would not have been formally acknowledged, but one suspects that they were significant. In any case, she lived in exciting times, and was clearly at the center of the action!

Read this transcript of a radio program about her.

Check out her entry in Wikipedia.

There is a new biography of Lavoisier by Madison Scott Bell which should be good, and a new fictionalized biography of Count Rumford by Nicolas Delbanco which is getting some publicity. Someone should do a biography of their wife, or perhaps a miniseries if they can find an adequately beautiful actress!