That same year Priestley moved to Calne, Wiltshire, where he served as librarian and tutor for William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, and his family. For his work on gases, Priestley was awarded the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal in 1773. He gained particular renown for an improved pneumatic trough in which, by collecting gases over mercury instead of in water, he was able to isolate and examine gases that were soluble in water. Priestley’s experimental success resulted predominantly from his ability to design ingenious apparatuses and his skill in their manipulation. Priestley discovered 10 new gases: nitric oxide (nitrous air), nitrogen dioxide (red nitrous vapour), nitrous oxide (inflammable nitrous air, later called “laughing gas”), hydrogen chloride (marine acid air), ammonia (alkaline air), sulfur dioxide (vitriolic acid air), silicon tetrafluoride (fluor acid air), nitrogen (phlogisticated air), oxygen (dephlogisticated air, independently codiscovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele), and a gas later identified as carbon monoxide. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. That year he married Mary Wilkinson, daughter of the ironmaster Isaac Wilkinson. He was ordained a Dissenting minister in 1762. In 1761 he became tutor in languages and literature at the Warrington Academy, Lancashire. He renounced the Calvinist doctrines of original sin and atonement, and he embraced a rational Unitarianism that rejected the Trinity and asserted the perfectibility of man.īetween 17, Priestley ministered at Needham Market, Suffolk, and at Nantwich, Cheshire. Priestley received an excellent education in philosophy, science, languages, and literature at Daventry, where he became a “furious freethinker” in religion.
Dissenters, so named for their unwillingness to conform to the Church of England, were prevented by the Act of Uniformity (1662) from entering English universities. He entered the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, Northamptonshire, in 1752. Priestley was born into a family of moderately successful wool-cloth makers in the Calvinist stronghold of West Riding, Yorkshire. He is best remembered for his contribution to the chemistry of gases. Joseph Priestley, (born March 13, 1733, Birstall Fieldhead, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England-died February 6, 1804, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, U.S.), English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry.
#PRIESTLEY PERIODIC TABLE EXPLORER HOW TO#
Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.
0 kommentar(er)
