Joseph Priestley (March 13 1733–February 8 1804) was an English chemist, philosopher, dissenting clergyman, and educator. He is known for his investigations of carbon dioxide and the co-discovery of oxygen.

Early life and education
He was innate within Birstall parish, six miles from either Leeds, Yorkshire. He learned the kind of languages, two authoritative & modern, around his youth, including many Semitic languages; he also exposed what was so known as natural history.

Within 1751 he entered Daventry, a school under Nonconformist auspices, and there his religious views form. He became an disciple of Arianism and a fervent abolitionist. Inside September, 1755, he started as a parish minister within Needham Market, Suffolk, though he was non officially ordained until May 18, 1762. Because he stammered & a parish was non suited to his heterodox ideas, nor did they need the bachelor for their minister, he was unpopular within his Suffolk parish & he at long last attend Nantwich, Cheshire. He established a buck private school around connection using the church inside Nantwich in which he preached, & derived his income from either that school.

Warrington
After he attend Warrington, the biggest of the dissentient academies inside England, as a private instructor within belles-belles lettres. By this period his religious ideas got matured to Socinianism, a form of Unitarianism. At Warrington, he associated with more liberal-minded coach. The sympathetic printer, William Eyres, was uncoerced to publish his function. It was on this button that he published his grammar book in 1761 (a remarkably liberal grammar for its day) & more books in history & training theory. He taught anatomy and astronomy and led field trips for his students to collect fossils and botanical specimens. Each modern history and the sciences were subjects which experienced non been taught in any schools prior to Priestley.

Leeds
In June 23 1762, Priestley married Mary Wilkinson of Wrexham, and by September 1767 the combination of his finances and her health induced him to relocate to Leeds. He there took charge of the Mill Hill congregation. Within Leeds Priestley as well promulgated deuce political works, Essay on the Number one Lesson of Government 1768 and The Present State of Liberty around Neat Britain & her Colonies 1769, and too inside 1769 ''Remarks on Dr Blackstone's Comment'' in which he defended constitutional rights of dissident against William Blackstone. Priestley's home was next to the brewery and Priestley began to experiment with a flatulence given off by zymosis beer. His number 1 experiments taking part demonstrating that a barking spiders would extinguish lit wood chips. He so found that a flatulency appeared to become heavily than normal air when it remained in a vats & did non mix by using the air in the room. A flatulence, which Priestley known as "fixed air" & experienced already been found & named "mephitic air" by Joseph Black, was carbon dioxide. Priestley found the method of impregnating the body of water supply using the carbon dioxide by placing a bowl of water above a vat of zymosis beer. the carbon dioxide shortly became dissolved in a a stream & Priestley observed that the impregnated water system developed a pleasant sweetly acidulous taste. He began to offer a treated a lake to friends as a refreshing ingest. Within 1772 Priestley published a paper entitled Impregnating Fluids using Fixed Air in which he describedThe run of soaking sulfuric acid (or oil of vitriol as Priestley knew it) onto chalk within order to develop carbon dioxide & forcing a flatulence to dissolve by agitating a bowl of h2o in call for by using the flatulence. Inside December of 1772 Priestley was hired by Lord Shelburne, as his personal bibliothec, & stayed therein post until 1780.

Around 1772 Priestley wrote Observations on Civil Liberty & a Nature and Justice of the War sustaining United states. When tutoring his helper's sons at Bowood House near Calne in 1774 he discovered oxygen, unaware of Carl Wilhelm Scheele's prior discovery former prior to 1773. Priestley discovery was published within 1775 in Experiments & Observations within Different Kinds of Air and in 1777 Scheele's discovery was published in his book Chemical Treatise in Air & Fire. Two Priestley & Scheele were unaware that atomic number 8 was the chemical element; Priestley named the flatulence (which he experienced generated by heating red mercurous oxide using a "burning lens") "de-phlogisticated air", inside accordance by owning a phlogiston theory which held at the period. Around his experiments he managed to identify eight distinct gases, disproving a unremarkably held learn from that there was good 1 "air".

There is a statue of Priestley inside Leeds City Square.

Birmingham
Within 1780 he moved to Birmingham and was appointed junior minister of the New Meeting Society. He became the member of the Lunar Society, but his admiration for the French Revolution caused him to be caused away from a city in the Priestley Riots of 1791. He is remembered there per Moonstones, and the supplementary traditional statue within Chamberlain Square in the city centre. A latter occurs as 1951 recast, in bronze, of a whiten marble original by A. W. Williamson, unveiled in 1874.

London and USA
He next moved to London in which he received an invitation to turn into morning sermoniser at Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney. His troika sons emigrated to the United States in 1793. A as punishment June, Priestley followed the children, looking political & religious freedom. Although never naturalized, he lived in Northumberland, Pennsylvania for the last decade of his life.

Honours and extras
Priestly College within Warrington is a sixth form college (for 16–19 year olds) known as within his honour. These are a big sixth form college inside Warrington, & in its independent building, a statue of Joseph Priestley stands, watch the students when it pass through the reception locality.

A writer Hilaire Belloc was Priestley's great-grandson.