Template:Are You Sure/May 8
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• ... that Antoine Lavoisier:
- Played a key role in changing chemistry from a qualitative science to a quantitative science
- Discovered the role oxygen plays in combustion
- Named named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783)
- Opposed the phlogiston theory
- Helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements
- Helped to reform chemical nomenclature
- Predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element (1777) rather than a compound
- Discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same
- Was executed as a traitor during the French Revolution?
• ... that mathematician John Henry Constantine "Henry" Whitehead (1904–1960) was one of the founders of homotopy theory, which originated in algebraic topology as a systematic study of situations in which maps come with homotopies between them; and that J.J. Rotman, in his book on algebraic topology, as a tribute to Whitehead's intellect, stated: "There is a canard that every textbook of algebraic topology either ends with the definition of the Klein bottle or is a personal communication to J. H. C. Whitehead."?