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A Brief Biography of Joseph Priestley

offers an excellent summary of his life.

An excellent biography can be found onthe site Joseph Priestley. A list of source

is also given.

Brief biographical material can be foundon the sites MSC Role: Joseph Priestley,

and Hyper Chemistry on the Web.

Check out Joseph Priestley on Making

Carbonated Water. This site is a

complete scan of Priestley's originalwork which cost just one schilling whenprinted in 1772.The InfoPlease.comEncyclopedia has an

excellent summary on the history andproperties of rubber.

Check out the excellent bookSerendipity: Accidental Discoveries inScienceby Royston M. Roberts (1989,John Wiley and Sons). This bookdescribes Priestley's life and discoveriesin great detail. This is a fascinatingbook.

The New York Timeshas three goodarticles on Priestley:

Chemists at Sesquicentennial Will

The king of serendipity.

Joseph Priestley was one of those tinkerers that happened to stumble

across some of the most important scientific discoveries of all time.

That's a picture of him below.

Priestley was born near Leeds in England on

March 13, 1733 (you're absolutely correct ifyou've concluded that he has long passed away).

He was raised in a strict Calvinist family. While

studying to become a minister, he found that his

strong liberal beliefs conflicted with his church's

teachings. As as result, in 1767, Priestley became

a pastor in a small dissenting church in Leeds.

Note that Priestley had no real interest in the

sciences. In fact, he never took a single formal science course during

his entire lifetime.

This all changed when he met the one and only Benjamin Franklin,one of the most prominent scientists of the day, while on a trip to

London in 1766. Franklin's specialty was electricity (remember the

famous, but often exaggerated, kite experiment?). Franklin awakened

Priestley's interest in science and they were to become lifelong

friends. As a result of this encounter, Priestley began to dabble in the

field of electricity.

In 1767 (just one year after meeting Franklin), Priestley made his firs

major discovery - that graphite can conduct electricity. This may not

sound like a big deal, unless you realize that carbon is the main

ingredient in modern electrical resistors. That same year he publishedThe History of Electricity.

Now, remember that Priestley also became a pastor in Leeds at the

same time. He lived next to a brewery and was intrigued by the "air"

that floated over the fermenting grain.

Priestley didn't know it at the time, but he was about to become one o

the most famous chemists of all time.

From his first experiment, he was able to show that this brewery gas

oseph Priestley

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Honor Joseph Priestley: FamousScientist, Who DiscoveredOxygen and Invented SodaWater, Was Called a Heretic(September 5, 1926, Section VIII,page 14, cloumn 5).

Priestley and Oxygen(Editorial:March 13, 1933, page 12, column3).

Topics of The Times: An Early

Visitor(June 4, 1954, page 22,column 4).

extinguished lighted wood chips. He also noticed that this gas drifted

to the ground around the vat, implying that it was more dense (heavie

than normal air. This gas would later be identified as carbon dioxide

He devised a method to produce the gas back in his home laboratory.

When the heavy gas, as he called it, was dissolved in water, he found

that it had a very pleasant and tangy taste. For this invention of soda

water, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1772 and

received a medal from the Royal Society in 1773.

Yes, he invented soda pop. (Should we blame him for the cola wars?

In 1772, Priestley made another important discovery. He had placed

shoot of a green plant into a container of water. He then covered the

container and lit a candle in it until it completely burned out. Later,

Priestley was able to both burn the candle again and keep mice alive i

the air (did they have lab mice back then?). Priestley became the firs

person ever to observe the respiration of plants - the fact that they tak

in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

Priestley continued to experiment with gases. He devised a new

apparatus that allowed him collect gases over mercury. As you mayrecall from science classes years ago, mercury is a dense liquid at

room temperature. Due to this high density, mercury will not absorb

gases as easily as water. Priestley floated various materials on top of

the mercury and sealed a glass vessel over the top. He then heated th

material with a burning lens(essentially a magnifying glass used to

concentrate the sun's rays).

One of his first experiments with this device (again in 1772) produced

a new gas - nitrous oxide. It didn't take long for people to discover th

this gas had unusual effects on people - hence the name laughing gas.

Eventually, nitrous oxide would become the first surgical anesthetic,but this discovery was many years away.

In 1774, Priestley placed a piece of mercuric oxide into the same test

chamber. When he sampled the gas, he found that it had an unusual

property - it would burn a candle brightly. All the other gases that he

had tested extinguished the flame.

Priestley had just discovered what would later be known as oxygen.

He called the gas dephlogisticated air, based on the phlogiston theory

(the idea that combustion was essentially the process of losing a

hypothetical substance known as phlogiston) of the day.In his next experiment, he observed that the green plant material that

had grown on the walls of his jars when exposed to sunlight produced

a gas. He quickly identified this unknown gas as the same gas that w

released from the heated mercuric oxide. Priestley had just

documented the process ofphotosynthesis.

Priestley told French chemist Antoine Lavosier of his discovery.

Lavosier repeated Priestley's experiments and eventually proved the

phlogiston theory wrong. Lavosier named the gas oxygen. From the

oseph Priestley

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experiments, Lavosier summarized his findings into the famous law o

conservation of matter - you know this one from high school science

that matter is neither created nor destroyed but is simply changed fro

one form to another.

So, let's summarize to this point. Priestley discovered that graphite

was a conductor of electricity, isolated and described the properties o

carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and oxygen, invented soda pop,

identified the gases involved in plant respiration (unifying chemistry

and biology), and observed photosynthesis for the first time.

This list of accomplishments would guarantee anyone a position in th

history books, but Priestley did not stop there. He also isolated and

described the properties of ammonia, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen

sulphide, and carbon monoxide for the first time. Added to this long

list is the decomposition of ammonia by electricity in 1781.

Yet, the discovery that he made on April 15, 1770 would prove to be

the most useful to the common man. On this date Priestley discovere

that India gum could be used to rubout lead pencil marks. Yes, he

had invented the eraser and gave the material its common name -

rubber.

Priestley's nonconformist religious and political views eventually ran

him into big trouble. His bookHistory of Corruptions of Christianity

(1782) was officially burned in 1785. Due to his open support of both

the American and French Revolutions, his Burmingham home and

church were burned to the ground by an angry mob in 1791. He

moved to London, but the persecution continued.

Finally, in 1794, Priestley and his family hopped a boat for an eight

week voyage and emigrated to the United States. He was

enthusiastically received by the scientific and civic bodies of his day.He settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania and retired to the peacefu

life of his writings. Joseph Priestley died quietly in his home on

February 6, 1804.

Many scientists feel that Priestley was not a real scientist - he was

more of a dabbler in science. He frequently did not see the importanc

of his discoveries. His real downfall was his continued belief in the

phlogiston theory until the day he died. Yet, one cannot deny that his

discoveries and research methodology provided the foundation for

nearly all scientists that came after him.

And to think that he did it all without a scientific education. Maybe

that was his advantage.

Useless? Useful? I'll leave that for you to decide.

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