Joseph Priestley
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Joseph Priestley (March 13, 1733 – February 8, 1804) was an English chemist, philosopher, dissenting clergyman, and educator.[1]
He is known for his investigations of carbon dioxide and the co-discovery of oxygen.
Early life and education
Joseph Preistley was born on March 13, 1733 in Fieldhead, a village near Yorkshire, England. His mother died when he was young and Preistley was sent to live with an aunt who was a devout Protestant. He was educated in nonconformist religious schools and excelled in a variety of languages both classical and modern including Arabic and Hebrew. He also studied what was then known as natural history. The school he attended, Batley Grammar School, still exists, and it now has a junior and infants section for children between the ages of 2-10 named Priestley House.
In 1752 he entered the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, Northamptonshire under the auspices of Nonconformism, and there his religious views took shape. He became an adherent of Arianism and a fervent abolitionist. In September, 1755, he started as a parish minister in Needham Market, Suffolk, though he was not officially ordained until 18 May, 1762.
Because he stammered, and the parish was neither suited to his heterodox ideas, nor wanting a bachelor for their minister, Priestley was unpopular in his Suffolk parish and ultimately went to Nantwich, Cheshire. He established a private school with 36 students in connection with the church in Nantwich where he preached, and derived his income from that school.
He recieved his LL.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1765.
Warrington
Subsequently he went to Warrington Acadamey in Lancashire, the biggest of the dissenting academies in England, as a tutor in belles-lettres. By this time his religious ideas had matured to Socinianism, a form of Unitarianism. At Warrington, he associated with other liberal-minded tutors. A sympathetic printer, William Eyres, was willing to publish his work. It was here that he published his grammar book in 1761 (a remarkably liberal grammar for its day) and other books on history and educational theory. While at Warrington he developed courses which placed an emphasis on history, science, and the arts. Preistley advocated school curriculums that reflected contemporary discoveries, reasoning such an approach would better prepare students for the practical realities of life. He taught anatomy and astronomy and led field trips for his students to collect fossils and botanical specimens. Both modern history and the sciences were subjects which had not been taught in any schools before Priestley.
Warrington Academy became the formost school of its kind in England. <<World of Biology, Gale Group, 1999>>
Leeds
On 23 June 1762, Priestley married Mary Wilkinson of Wrexham, however, by September 1767 the combination of his finances and her poor health caused him to accept a pastorate in Leeds, where he took charge of the Mill Hill congregation. During his tenure at Mill Hill Priestley published two political works, Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) and The Present State of Liberty in Great Britain and her Colonies (1769). In 1769 he offered Remarks on Dr. Blackstone's Commentaries, where he defended constitutional rights of dissenters against William Blackstone.
Priestley's house was next to a brewery and he became fascinated with the layer of dense gas which hung over the giant vats of fermenting beer. His first experiments involved demonstrating that the gas would extinguish lighted wood chips. He then noticed that the gas appeared to be heavier than normal air as it remained in the vats and did not mix with the air in the room. The distinctive gas, which Priestley called "fixed air", had already been discovered and named "mephitic air" by Joseph Black. It was, in fact, carbon dioxide. Priestley discovered a method of impregnating water with the carbon dioxide by placing a bowl of water above a vat of fermenting beer. The carbon dioxide soon became dissolved in the water (producing soda water) and Priestley found that the impregnated water developed a pleasant sweet acidic taste. In 1773 he published an article on the carbonation of water (soda water) which won him the Royal Society's Copley Medal and brought much attention to his scientific work
He began to offer the treated water to friends as a refreshing drink. In 1772 Priestley published a paper entitled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air in which he described a process of dripping sulfuric acid (or oil of vitriol as Priestley knew it) onto chalk in order to produce carbon dioxide and forcing the gas to dissolve by agitating a bowl of water in contact with the gas.
As early as 1766 Preistley met Benjamin Franklin in London and the association between the two men of science was fruitful leading the former to methodical explorations of electricity and ultimately to publish a definitive history of electrical research. Later, due to the support of Benjamin Franklin, Priestley was hired by Lord Shelburne, as his personal librarian, and stayed in that post until 1780. It was here that he conducted the majority of his extensive chemical research which included the discovery of various gasses.
While tutoring his benefactor's sons at Bowood House near Calne in 1774 he discovered a gas which French scientist Antoine Lavoisier would later name oxygen. Priestley was not yet aware of Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele's prior experiments with the same gas sometime before 1775. J.B. Preistley published his findings in the year 1775 in Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. Later, in 1777, Scheele's discovery was published in his book Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire.
Both Priestley and Scheele were unaware that oxygen was a chemical element; Priestley named the gas (which he had generated by heating red mercuric oxide with a "burning lens") "de-phlogisticated air", in accordance with the phlogiston theory commonly held at the time.
Priestley's concept of this new found "air" or gas, which dramatically supported and enhanced combustion, was shaped by his attachment to the prevalent "phlogiston" theory. Phlogiston was supposed to to be a substance which lends materials their ability to burn. An awkward explanation was offered that somehow this substance (phlogiston)with "negative weight" was released during the burning process and the surrounding air (or gas) must exhibit the capacity to absorb this phlogiston.
Priestley accurately observed that the new gas he discovered could support combustion for longer periods than ordinary air. He surmised that this gas contained no phlogiston and could thus absorb more of it than could ordinary air. Following this line of logic he called the gas "dephlogisticated air". In fact Priestly rated the qualitiy of various airs by their relative ability to absorb phlogiston among other important properties. Preistley's writings about his discoveries gave the necessary clue which enabled Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the French scientist, to recognize the error in Priestley's theory. Lavoisier correctly asserted the gas to be one of the active causes of combustion rather than the receiver of the supposed phlogiston. Lavoisier named the gas "Oxygen" and effectively laid the phlogiston theory to rest. Priestley nevertheless defended the outdated theory.
Priestley is considered to have been a better experimentalist than a theorist and this characteristic manifested itself in the multitude of his observations and creative experiments. Priestley's wide interests and capacity to intuitively sense the interrelationship of previously unrecognized phenomena led him from Chemisrty to Biology with relative ease. He recognized that production of "good air" (later known as oxygen) was related to respiration of plants and that this offset the production of carbon dioxide produced by animals. His observations in this area could be seen as seminal in the development of biological science and the awareness of the interdependence among various parts of the created world.
"The injury which is continually done to the atmosphere by the respiration of such a large number of animals...is, in part at least, repaired by the vegetable creation." A. Holt, A Life of Joseph Priestley, Oxford University Press, London, England. 1931.
In 1777, he wrote The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. This book was devoted to the subject of the freedom of the human will. Schopenhauer, in his On the Freedom of the Will, in 1839, included Priestley as one of three great men who completely changed their minds regarding this subject. "This proves," he wrote, "how difficult and deep down is the correct insight into our problem." The other two great men, Schopenhauer wrote, were Spinoza and Voltaire. Priestley wrote that "There is no absurdity more glaring to my understanding, than the notion of philosophical liberty. — Without a miracle, or the intervention of some foreign cause, no volition or action of any man could have been otherwise, than it has been."
There is a statue of Priestley in Leeds City Square.
Birmingham
In 1780 he moved to Birmingham and was appointed junior minister of the New Meeting Society. He became a member of the Lunar Society, but his admiration for the French Revolution caused him to be driven out of the city in the Priestley Riots of 1791. He is remembered there by the Moonstones, and a more traditional statue in Chamberlain Square in the city centre. The latter is a 1951 recast, in bronze, of a white marble original by A. W. Williamson, unveiled in 1874.
There is a Blue Plaque comemorating him on on the side of the Church of St Michael and St Joseph, New Meeting House Lane, Birmingham [1], and another on the Warrington Salvation Army Citadel, once the home of Priestley[2].
London and USA
He next moved to London where he received an invitation to become morning preacher at Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney. His three sons emigrated to the United States in 1793. The following June, Priestley followed them, seeking political and religious freedom. Although never naturalised, he lived in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, for the last decade of his life until his death at the age of 70. Priestley is buried in rural Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
Honors and extras
- The American Chemical Society's highest honour, the Priestley Medal, is named for him.
- Priestley College in Warrington is a sixth form college (for 16–19 year olds) named in his honour. It is the largest sixth form college in Warrington, and within its main building, a statue of Joseph Priestley stands, watching over the students as they pass through the reception area.
- The writer Hilaire Belloc was Priestley's great-grandson.
See also
Footnotes
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ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
<<Please add at least 3 good references here. The references may be books and/or Web sites, but they need to be formatted according to the style given in our Writer's Manual.>>
<<Robert E. Schofield,The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Works from 1733 to 1773, Chemical Heritage Foundation>>
<<Robert e. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Works from 1773 to 1804, Chemical Heritage Foundation>>
<<A. Holt, A Life of Joseph Priestley, Oxford University Press, London, England, 1931>>
<<D.J. Rhees, Joseph Priestley, Enlightened Chemist, American Chemical Society, Center for History of chemistry, Publication N1, 1983>>
External links
- The Joseph Priestley Society
- A comprehensive Biography at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
- A detailed biographical article from the Thoemmes Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers.
- Priestley Sixth Form College, Warrington, named for Joseph Priestley
- Priestley artifacts on display at "Revolutionary Players" industrial revolution website, URL accessed August 14, 2006
- Joseph Priestly Biography, part of a series of famous American Unitarians.
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