Before the French Revolution, Benjamin Franklin was engaged in a charm offensive in Paris on behalf of the newly-formed administration in Philadelphia. His fellow rebel colonists needed money, trade and logistical support from France.in order to sustain the new Union's independence. Indeed, so successful was ambassador Franklin at winning donations from Louis XVI that the impact on the French treasury may well have contributed to the events of 1789. So much I recall from Ken Burns' detailed two-part TV documentary shown here on PBS America.
It was clear from that documentary that Franklin took advantage of his position in order to participate fully in the social and intellectual life of France. It is surprising that in that time he had so little contact with Antoine Lavoisier, pioneer chemist, who was later to be executed as a member of minor nobility and as a landlord. Though they would not describe themselves as scientists (the term did not emerge in English until 1834), they were among the most prominent executants of the scientific method which was emerging at the end of the 18th century.
Lavoisier was a member of a royal commission investigating the methods of Franz Mesmer. The commission was nominally headed by Franklin but by 1784, when the commission reported, he was already suffering from what are now termed "mobility problems" and had little day-to-day involvement in the commission's investigations.
Franklin and Lavoisier did collaborate through the mail on two or three developments, most importantly from Franklin's point of view the optimum composition of gunpowder and its production. They had intermediaries, but it seems never had a freewheeling face-to-face discussion. How fascinating that would have been!
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