Rinman, Diderot, and Lavoisier: New Evidence Regarding Guillaume François Rouelle’s Private Laboratory and Chemistry Course

This paper presents two recently discovered documents that shed light on the activities of the French chemist Guillaume François Rouelle. In 1746 the Swedish chemist and mineralogist Sven Rinman visited the private chemistry laboratory recently set up by Rouelle in Paris, and he has left us a record of this visit, including some rare sketches. Given the crucial contribution made by Rouelle’s laboratory to the development of the science of chemistry in 18 th -century Europe, Rinman’s description is reproduced here in full. Rouelle also taught an extremely popular chemistry course at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and conserved in the archives of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier are some notes taken by Denis Diderot in 1757 which demonstrate that for a period the prominent Enlightenment fijigure attended these lectures regularly.