Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley was an English theologian, educator, natural philosopher, and political writer born in 1733. He became one of the most wide-ranging minds of the 18th century, producing books on grammar, history, education, electricity, and religion as well as experimental science.

He is most famous for his experiments on gases, especially the work that led him to isolate the gas he called “dephlogisticated air,” later understood as oxygen. Priestley also studied carbon dioxide and other kinds of air, and his clear, practical style helped make scientific ideas more accessible to a wider public.

His religious and political views made him a controversial public figure in Britain, and the 1791 Birmingham riots destroyed his home, library, and laboratory. He later emigrated to the United States, where he spent his final years in Pennsylvania and continued writing and thinking until his death in 1804.