Short answers, pulled from the story.
An acid-base reaction is a chemical reaction that occurs between an acid and a base. It can be used to determine pH through titration, and several theoretical frameworks, called acid-base theories, describe its mechanisms.
Guillaume-Francois Rouelle first proposed the concept of an acid-base reaction in 1754. He introduced the word "base" into chemistry to mean a substance that reacts with an acid to give it solid form as a salt.
Antoine Lavoisier provided the first scientific concept of acids and bases around 1776, defining acids by their oxygen content. His view held for over 30 years until Sir Humphry Davy proved in 1810 that hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen telluride, and the hydrohalic acids contain no oxygen.
Svante Arrhenius defined an acid as a substance that ionises in water to form hydrogen cations and a base as one that dissociates in water to form hydroxide ions. His definitions apply only to aqueous solutions, and his 1884 work on ions in solution led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903.
Formulated in 1923 by Johannes Nicolaus Bronsted and Martin Lowry, the Bronsted-Lowry definition treats an acid as a proton donor and a base as a proton acceptor. It is independent of any solvent, forming conjugate acids and bases rather than a salt and solvent.
Gilbert N. Lewis defined a base as a compound that can donate an electron pair and an acid as a compound that can receive that electron pair. Devised in 1923 and elaborated in 1938, it removed the hydrogen requirement and has the broadest definition of acids and bases.
Different acid-base theories complement each other and apply with different breadth, from the most restrictive Arrhenius theory limited to water, to Bronsted-Lowry, to the broadest Lewis model. Additional frameworks like the solvent system, Lux-Flood, and Usanovich definitions extend the concept to non-aqueous and non-hydrogen systems.