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England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1751. Joseph then apparently celebrated his birthday on March 23, as he wrote in a letter dated March 23, 1783, that he had completed his first half century. See <b>Thorpe TE. (1906)</b> | |||
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Revision as of 22:15, 21 April 2012
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| "If," says Mr Frederic Harrison, "we choose one man as a type of the intellectual energy of the eighteenth century we could hardly find a better than Joseph Priestley, though his was not the greatest mind of the century. His versatility, eagerness, activity and humanity; the immense range of his curiosity in all things, physical, moral or social; his place in science, in theology, in philosophy and in politics; his peculiar relation to the Revolution, and the pathetic story of his unmerited sufferings, may make him the hero of the eighteenth century."[1] |
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), an English scientist who discovered the component gas of the atmosphere subsequently named oxygen by the French chemist, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), whose learning of the details of Priestley's signal experiment of discovering the gas critically influenced the future course of Lavoisier's career as a chemist, one that led to a revolution in the principles of chemistry and the beginnings of modern chemistry—a new understanding of chemical science that contributed importantly in enabling the Englishman, John Dalton (1766-1844), to formulate a chemical atomic theory, the bedrock of modern chemistry.[2][Note 1][Note 2]
Early life
Joseph Priestley entered the world in England (13 March [old style] 1733)[Note 3], and, after a distinguished but turbulent career, died in exile in America (1804), age 72 years. He was born in the house of his father, Jonas Priestley, and his mother, Mary (née Swift), the first of six children, four sons and two daughters, the homestead, Fieldhead, located in Birstal Parish, in the West Riding district of Yorkshire, about six miles from Leeds northeast and some fifty miles from Manchester southwest.[3] [4] Fieldhead had been the Priestley family home for generations.
Warrington Academy
Notes
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- ↑
Jackson J. (2005): Full biographies of Joseph Priestley and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.
- Chapter titles: Prologue: God in the air. The cloth-dresser's son. The sums and receipts of parallel worlds. The gas in the beer. The prodigy. The goodness of air. The problem of burning. The sentimental journey. The mouse in the jar. The twelve days. The language of war. "King Mob". The world out of joint. The new world. Epilogue: the burning world.
- See review of Jackson's book in American Scientist: A Tale of Two Chemists by Seymour Mauskopf.
- Joe Jackson Homepage
- ↑
Joseph Priestley site:britannica.com OR site:gov OR site:edu OR site:ac.uk OR site:edu.au
- ↑
England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1751. Joseph then apparently celebrated his birthday on March 23, as he wrote in a letter dated March 23, 1783, that he had completed his first half century. See Thorpe TE. (1906)
- ↑
Bright HA. (1859): A brief history of the birth and demise of the Warrington Academy, with an encomium to Joseph Priestley.
- Excerpt: "In 1761, Dr. Aikin was promoted to the Theological Tutorship, which was now vacant by Dr. Taylor's death. Mr. (afterwards the celebrated Dr.) Priestley was chosen to succeed Dr. Aikin as Tutor of Languages and Polite Literature. Of Dr. Priestley it must be unnecessary for me to speak. Eminent as a chemist, a philosopher, a politician and a theologian, he was one of the most remarkable men of his day. It is Coleridge who addresses him as Patriot, and Saint, and Sage," and whether we agree with, or differ from, his views on Philosophy or Theology, we am have but one opinion of the vastness of his learning, and the purity of his life. He was the greatest of the many worthies of the Warrington Academy...In 1767 the Academy lost the services of Dr. Priestley, and in 1770 the no less valuable services of Mr. Seddon. Dr. Priestley resigned, be tells us, partly on account of bis wife, and partly because the salary of £100 per annum with a bouse, and £15 a year for boarders, was insufficient for the maintenance of his family."
References
- ↑ Thorpe T.E. (1906) Joseph Priestley. London: E. P. Dutton & Co. | Google Books Free eBook
- ↑ Jackson J. (2005) A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670034347; Penguin USA About Book. ISBN 9780143038832. | Google Books preview.
- ↑ Birstall
- ↑ About Leeds
- ↑ Bright HA. (1859) A historical sketch of Warrington Academy. T. Brakell. 30pp.
Bibliography
- F.W. Gibbs. (1965) Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth.
- A biography of Joseph Priestley, his life, work, and the worlds of science, religion, politics, education in which he lived. Presents detailed descriptions of Priestley's most important experiments studying the properties and chemistry of gases.
- From book jacket: ”Frederick William Gibbs is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry and Honorary Lecturer in the History of Technology at University College, London… a Foundation Member of the British Society for the History of Science, a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of the History of Science and a 'Member of the Association for Science Education."
- Robert E. Schofield. (1997) The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1773. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01662-7. | Google Books preview.
- From Preface: "This work was begun some thirty years ago as a labor of love and intense interest, when I first discovered there was no definitive biography of Joseph Priestley, one of the most distinguished polymaths of eighteenth-century England. It soon became painfully clear just why this was the case: Priestley was simply too many persons for any one easily to comprehend them all into a single study. Yet, in the long run, thoroughly to understand Priestley and his age, it must sometime be necessary to join those varied manifestations of his life into a study that might begin to integrate and illuminate the extraordinary career of this exemplar of British Enlightenment. Properly done, the subject of middle-class, Dissenting, intellectual achievements in eighteenth-century England would also be illuminated, as had not previously been done."
- Robert E. Schofield. (2009) The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1804. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 9780271024592.| Google Books preview.
- From Preface: "Nunc dimittis! A project begun some forty years ago is now completed. And if it is not the definitive biography (whatever that might be) of Joseph Priestley that I had originally intended, it is, in at least one sense, a complete one. So far as I have been able to do so, I have consulted and described every published writing of Joseph Priestley and attempted to place every bit of it in its historical context. I suggest that this is unique...This is an intellectual biography, not a psychological personality study or a sociological history of middle-class Britain in the eighteenth century...Priestley was a man of the Enlightenment; he seems always to have maintained a decent reticence and did not display his emotions to public scrutiny. Only rarely, in correspondence or publications, did he express his feelings. Even his Memoirs dwell more on his friends, his benefactors, and his work than on himself. But intellectually is also how I see him. Priestley is important because of his ideas, and it is ideas that I chiefly describe and discuss."