When Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was beheaded during the French Revolution, he left behind a widow whom history has overlooked.
Nobel prize-winning scientists Roald Hoffmann and Harold Varmus and art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz discuss a beguiling portrait of the Lavoisiers by Jacques-Louis David, painted just 6 years before the famed chemist was led to the guillotine. The three explore their infatuation with this portrait and revealed all that is hinted at on the canvas--and all that is not.
The event was part of the 2011 World Science Festival at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.