Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (13 March 1733 – 8 February 1804) was an English chemist, philosopher, clergyman, and teacher. He is known as the discoverer of oxygen.[1] He was a Unitarian.[2]
Joseph Priestley | |
|---|---|
 Priestley by William Artaud | |
| Born | 13 March 1733 |
| Died | 8 February 1804 Northumberland, Pennsylvania |
On 1 August 1774, Priestly identified oxygen in his laboratory at Bowood House in Wiltshire, England.[3]
The Priestley Riots
The Priestley Riots (or the Birmingham Riots of 1791) took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England.
The rioters' main targets were religious dissenters, led by Priestley. Both local and national issues stirred the rioters. But at the heart was the Dissenters' attempts to gain full civil rights, and their support of the French Revolution (though not its methods).
The riots started with an attack on the Royal Hotel, Birmingham. There a banquet was organised in sympathy with the French Revolution. Then, beginning with Priestley's church and home, the rioters attacked or burned four Dissenting chapels, twenty-seven houses, and several businesses. Many of them were drunk. They had found liquor while looting, or with which they were bribed. A small core could not be bribed, however, and stayed sober. The rioters burned not only the homes and chapels of the Dissenters, but also the homes of people they associated with Dissenters, such as members of the scientific Lunar Society.[4][5]
Joseph Priestley Media
Coat of Arms of Joseph Priestley
Priestley's birthplace (since demolished) in Fieldhead, Birstall, West Yorkshire – about six miles (10 km) southwest of Leeds
Title page of Rudiments of English Grammar (1761)
Mary Priestley, by Carl F. von Breda (1793); daughter of ironmaster Isaac Wilkinson, sister of industrialist John Wilkinson
A redacted version of A New Chart of History (1765); Priestley believed this chart would "impress" upon students "a just image of the rise, progress, extent, duration, and contemporary state of all the considerable empires that have ever existed in the world"
Priestley's "electrical machine for amateur experimentalists", illustrated in the first edition of his Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity (1768)
Title page to The History and Present State of Electricity (1769)
The earliest known portrait of Priestley, known as the "Leeds" portrait (c. 1763); except for his membership on the Leeds Library Committee, Priestley was not active in the town's social life
Priestley had been working on Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion since his Daventry days.
His Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) influenced early 19th-century political philosophers, including Jeremy Bentham.
References
- ↑ Antoine Lavoisier and Carl Wilhelm Scheele Carl Wilhelm Scheele also have a claim to the discovery of oxygen. See Kuhn, Thomas. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 53–60.
- ↑ "Joseph Priestley". Spartacus.co.uk. Archived from the original on July 19, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
- ↑ American Chemical Society (ACS), "Joseph Priestley: Discoverer of Oxygen"; retrieved 2012-5-23.
- ↑ Rose R.B. 1960. The Priestley Riots of 1791. Past and Present 18 1960: 68–88.
- ↑ Schofield, Robert E. 2004. The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: a study of his life and work from 1773 to 1804. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-02459-3
Other websites
- The Priestley Society
- A short biography Archived 2007-02-28 at the Wayback Machine at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
- Memorial essay (1874) on Priestley