Lavoisier

Lavoisier conducted the first adequate quantitative experiments on oxidation and gave the first correct explanation of how combustion works.[15] He used these and similar experiments, all started in 1774, to discredit the phlogiston theory and to prove that the substance discovered by Priestley and Scheele was a chemical element.

In one experiment, Lavoisier observed that there was no overall increase in weight when tin and air were heated in a closed container.[15] He noted that air rushed in when he opened the container, which indicated that part of the trapped air had been consumed. He also noted that the tin had increased in weight and that increase was the same as the weight of the air that rushed back in. This and other experiments on combustion were documented in his book Sur la combustion en général, which was published in 1777.[15] In that work, he proved that air is a mixture of two gases; ‘vital air’, which is essential to combustion and respiration, and azote (Gk. ἄζωτον “lifeless”), which did not support either. Azote later became nitrogen in English, although it has kept the earlier name in French and several other European languages.[15]

Lavoisier renamed ‘vital air’ to oxygène in 1777 from the Greek roots ὀξύς (oxys) (acid, literally “sharp”, from the taste of acids) and -γενής (-genēs) (producer, literally begetter), because he mistakenly believed that oxygen was a constituent of all acids.[18] Chemists (such as Sir Humphry Davy in 1812) eventually determined that Lavoisier was wrong in this regard (hydrogen forms the basis for acid chemistry), but by then the name was too well established.[19]

Oxygen entered the English language despite opposition by English scientists and the fact that the Englishman Priestley had first isolated the gas and written about it. This is partly due to a poem praising the gas titled “Oxygen” in the popular book The Botanic Garden (1791) by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin.[16]