Antoine Lavoisier explained combustion through combination with oxygen. In his textbook's Mercury–air experiment, prolonged heating produced a red solid and changed the air remaining in the vessel; heating the separated solid released a gas that supported combustion. The linked transformations made the composition of air and the chemistry of oxygen experimentally tractable.[ref]
Elements of Chemistry by Antoine Lavoisier. Part I, chapters III–V: mercury-air experiment and oxygen nomenclature
Portrait of Antoine Lavoisier
. Johann Friedrich Bolt (1769–1836), engraving dated 1796; reproduced in Biographies of Scientific Men (1912). Public domain: life plus 70 years or fewer; United States publication before 1931. Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
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