A century before Marie Curie made a place for women in theoretical science, editor, translator, and illustrator Marie Paulze Lavoisier (1758-1836), wife and research partner of chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, surrounded herself with laboratory work. As assistant and colleague of her husband, she became one of chemistry's first female researchers. In addition, she cultivated the arts and welcomed the era's intellectuals to her Paris salon for stimulating conversation.

Born Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze in 1758, she enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle in Paris, France, as the beautiful, intellectually curious daughter of scholar and nobleman Jacques Paulze, wealthy nephew of the Abbéy Terray. In 1771, after her mother's death, she left a convent school to become her father's hostess. On her own, she studied chemistry and languages. To avoid an arranged marriage at age 14 to Count d'Amerval, a family friend and unscrupulous fortune-hunter who was 36 years her senior, she agreed to...