author
Joseph Priestley
1733–1804
Best known for isolating the gas later named oxygen, he was far more than a laboratory pioneer: a minister, teacher, political writer, and restless experimenter whose ideas helped shape both modern chemistry and modern debate. His life moved from English dissenting circles to exile in America, with science, religion, and reform constantly tangled together.
3 Audiobooks
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
by Joseph Priestley
About the author
Born in Yorkshire in 1733, Joseph Priestley became a dissenting minister and an unusually wide-ranging writer. He published works on grammar, education, religion, politics, electricity, and natural philosophy, building a reputation as one of the most energetic intellectuals of the 18th century.
He is most famous for his experiments on gases. In 1774 he isolated the gas he called "dephlogisticated air," later recognized as oxygen, and he also carried out important work on other kinds of air and on carbonation. Even when later chemists rejected parts of the theory he used to explain his results, his experiments remained central to the development of modern chemistry.
Priestley was also a strong advocate for religious liberty and political reform, and those views made him a controversial figure. After anti-Priestley riots in Birmingham destroyed his home and laboratory in 1791, he eventually emigrated to the United States, where he spent his final years in Pennsylvania and died in 1804.