Claudine Picardet, linocut print, 9.25" x 12.5" by Ele Willoughby, 2025
For the PrinterSolstice prompt oxygen I made a portrait of a woman who was right there in the thick of things when the element oxygen was becoming understood. This is my hand-printed linocut portrait of Claudine Picardet (née Poullet, later Guyton de Morveau, 1735-1820). She was at the centre of things, making experiments in chemistry, mineralogy, recording meteorologic data and perhaps most importantly, translating the latest science from Swedish, English, German, Italian and possibly Latin to French in the height of the chemical revolution.
Claudine Poullet was the eldest daughter of a royal notary, François Poulet de Champlevey, and she married barrister and member of the Académie royale des sciences, arts, et belles-lettres de Dijon, Claude Picardet in 1755. His membership in the Académie was Claudine’s entry into the high society scientific bourgeoisie. She attended lectures and demonstrations and became involved as a scientist, translator and host of her own salon. When she began her career she signed her translations and annotated textbooks as "Mme P*** de Dijon.” The couple had a son died at 19 in 1776. Her husband died in 1796, and she moved to Paris where she married her longtime scientific collaborator and friend Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, deputy of the Council of five hundred and director and chemistry professor at the École Polytechnic. She continued her work and hosting scientific salons in Paris, where she was known as the Baroness Guyton-Morveau during Napoleon’s reign.
Her extensive translation work was part of the Bureau de traduction de Dijon headed by Guyton de Morveau, which required her to maintain extensive contacts abroad, be conversant with the latest science, be polylingual and even to perform laboratory experiments and examinations of mineralogical specimens to confirm the results in texts she translated. She produced books, papers and manuscripts circulated amongst French scientists. The other half dozen members were all male academics; none were as prolific, or translated from as many languages nor published in the Annales de Chimie, like her. Established by Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude Louis Berthollet in 1789, the Annales de Chimie paid translators as authors. She appears to eventually directed the team of translators. Claude-Nicolas Amanton wrote a misogynistic obituary crediting her work to her second husband, but this is contradicted by the evidence. She also was a prominent contributor, including works like her translation of John Hill’s Spatogenesia: the Origin and Nature of Spar; its Qualities and Uses (1772) to Jean-André Mongez’s Journal de physique.
She published the first translated volume of the chemical essays of Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who was one of the discoverers of oxygen, from Swedish and German into French, collected as Mémoires de chymie de M. C. W. Scheele; She was the person who brought Scheele’s work to oxygen to the attention of scientists in France. She translated Abraham Gottlob Werner’s 1774 mineralogy textbook into French, expanding and annotating the original to the degree that her Traité des caractères extérieurs des fossiles, traduit de l'allemand de M. A. G. Werner, 1790 is considered a new edition of the book. She likely contributed substantially tho the translation of Torbern Olaf Bergman’s six-volume Opuscula physica et chemica (Latin, 1779–1790), usually attributed to Guyton de Morveau. She also translated Richard Kirwan’s papers and may have contributed to Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier’s 1787 translation of his Essay on Phlogiston. Along with all the works in chemistry and mineralogy, she translated some meteorology and astronomy like "Observationes astron. annis 1781, 82, 83 institutæ in observatorio regio Havniensi" (1784), reporting the astronomical observations of the longitude of the Mars knot, made in December 1783 by Thomas Bugge. She attended Guyton de Morveau’s chemistry lectures and studied the mineral collection of the Dijon Academy. She even invented some French scientific terms to capture Werner’s neologisms.
From 1786 to 1787, Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude-Louis Bethollet and Antoine-François Fourcroy met almost daily while they worked to modernize chemical nomenclature, creating the definitive names still used in inorganic chemistry today and writing “Méthode de nomenclature chimique.” This included rules like simple substances should have simple names like hydrogen and oxygen and compounds should have compound names designating their parts, like sodium chloride. A 19th century painting of the authors notably includes both Claudine Picardet, holding a book to indicate her roll as translator and Mme Lavoisier. They were integrated in this work and deserve to be remembered for their roles.
Together with her second husband, Claudine Picardet established Dijon internationally as a scientific centre. Her translation work occurred at a vital moment in the chemical revolution, and she was recognized for the importance of her work during her day; we should remember her today.
References
Antonelli, Francesca. Madame Lavoisier and the Others: Women in Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier’s Network (1771-1836). Notes Rec. (2023) 77, 283–302 doi:10.1098/rsnr.2021.0074 Published online 13 July 2022
Ashworth Jr., William B., Scientist of the Day - Claudine Picardet, Linda Hall Library, August 7, 2018
Claudine Picardet, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025
Kahr, Bart. Gender and the Library of Mineralogy. Crystals 2022, 12(3), 333; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12030333
La femme savante de Dijon - Claudine Picardet - Mini bio 42, posted by Sur les épaules de géantes, YouTube video, watched January, 2025
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