216 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



ten a melancholy monument of your loss and theirs a 

 loss which humanity will feel for centuries." 



To realize the importance of the work in which Mme. 

 Lavoisier participated, it suffices to recall the fact that 

 her husband, as one of the creators of modern chemistry, 

 was the first to demonstrate the existence of the law of 

 the conservation of matter, which declares that in all 

 chemical changes nothing is lost and nothing is created. 

 The co-discoverer with Scheele and Priestly of oxygen, he 

 was the first one to exhibit the role of this important ele- 

 ment in the phenomena of combustion and respiration and 

 the first, also, to lay the foundations of a chemical nomen- 

 clature. We are not, then, surprised to learn that Mme. 

 Lavoisier's salon, even long after her lamented husband's 

 death, was frequented by the most eminent savants of the 

 time. For here were gathered such scientific luminaries as 

 Cuvier, Laplace, Arago, Lagrange, Prony, Berthollet, 

 Delambre, Biot, Hurnboldt, and others scarcely less bril- 

 liant. 



After the conclusion of Mme. Lavoisier's work in the 

 laboratory of her husband, little was accomplished by 

 women in chemistry for more than half a century. The 

 reason was simple. Chemistry was not a part of the cur- 

 riculum of studies for girls either in Europe or America. 

 Even "during the sixties, " writes a teacher of one of the 

 prominent female seminaries of the United States, "the 

 study of chemistry was mostly confined to the textbook, 

 supplemented once a year by a course of lectures from an 

 itinerant expert, who with his tanks of various gases pro- 

 duced highly spectacular effects. " 



When one recollects that the first institution in America 

 Vassar for the higher education of women was not 

 opened until 1865, one will understand that there were 

 previously to this date few opportunities for women to 

 study either chemistry or any of the other sciences. 



The first scientific institution to open its doors to women 



