December 2024 | Lab Grown Magazine

December 2024 | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 20 Mailed to 24,000 Jewelers Monthly - To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | December 2024 21 he first individual to discover carbon as the basis of Natural Diamonds was a humanitarian turned laboratory devotionalist. His name was Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. In the mid-to-late 1700s, this incredible chemist focused his attention on oxygen wanting to improve the less than pristine quality of Paris’ water supply. Paris was his home and also housed his legendary laboratory. Within that frequented small workspace, an array of scientific equipment and chemistry books were crammed, each outnumbered by Lavosier’s stacks of daily notes. He’d later retool those lab writings and publish chemistry books, which achieved great fanfare, and serious peer jealousy. These titles remain amongst the most esteemed scientific journals of our day. Fellow chemists, material scientists and physicists in that period often criticized Lavoisier’s self-containment within his seemingly chaotic lab. They ridiculed him as being scatter-brained and mocked his long and highly controversial lectures. Those sessions began to draw the most elites science minds from around the world. At such, he’d proclaim (and soon thereafter prove) that water is not an element, rather a compound. Several of his peers tried to lean on their disbelief, as his views were the polar opposite of what was considered to be hard facts. When his colleagues’ criticism turned to distain, some started to say Lavoisier had gone mad and lost his head. Sadly, he actually did. LGD How HPHT & CVD Could Be Yesterday’s Tech BY DAN SCOTT ADVANCEMENT Part 1 of 2 Call him “Mr. Carbon,” or more respectfully, the Father of modern chemistry: Antoine- Laurent Lavoisier (1793-1794) turned the tables of science. In the 1700s he proved water was not an element, rather a compound. By developing a theory to thrum of chemical reactivity of oxygen, he discovered diamonds are made of carbon. In many respects, LGD production owes their presence to his original carbon findings. Rendering: The Science History Institute Museum & Library Death to the Righteous Decapitated in 1794 along with his Father during the French Revolution, their official charge was tax fraud. It must be historically noted that Levoisier’s new structure of chemistry – compared in stature with Isaac Newton’s discoveries –would lay the groundwork for the periodic table, and overturn centuries of incorrect thinking about elements and compounds. A year before Lavoisier’s gruesome public beheading, his most notable book, Traité élémentaire de chimie was published by the French Academy of Sciences. The French Revolutionary Committee suppressed the same group. While studying there, Levoisier was arrested, convicted without a trail and sent to the guillotines. As Douglas McKie wrote his 1960s edition of the Traité , “thus perished the most illustrious victim of the Revolution.” Chastised Innovators The introduction of this story may appear out of place since this feature is focused on current LGD advancement. The reason for this set-up is two- fold. First, I was compelled to honor a chemical revolutionist who tragically died through the French Revolution. Fast forward though time and note the years of FTC litigation and industry torment placed upon the finally victorious Carroll Chatham (1914–1983), an outstanding American chemist who developed the flux method for synthesizing emeralds and several other precious gemstones, often with his son, Tom Chatham, by his side. The Chatham Legacy, An American Story , retells this heartfelt history as authored by Tom Chatham. Secondly, Levoisier’s namesake has been kept alive through the archives of science history, yet the average jewelry professional has never heard of him. Without celebrating his diamond carbon discovery, any LGD grower is negating the person who, in essence, offered the core formulation of growing any diamond by any means. The Carbon Corundum The very thing we seek to rid ourselves of is the necessity of Natural Diamond and LGD creation: Carbon.