

BEGINNINGS OF MODERN CHEMISTRY 



outstripping him in the pursuit of chemical discoveries. 

 In 1761 this young minister was given a position as 

 tutor in a nonconformist academy at Warrington, and 

 here, for six years, he was able to pursue his studies in 

 chemistry and electricity. In 1766, while on a visit to 

 London, he met Benjamin Franklin, at whose sugges- 

 tion he published his History of Electricity. From this 

 time on he made steady progress in scientific investiga- 

 tions, keeping up his ecclesiastical duties at the same 

 time. In 1780 he removed to Birmingham, having 

 there for associates such scientists as James Watt, 

 Boulton, and Erasmus Darwin. 



Eleven years later, on the anniversary of the fall of 

 the Bastile in Paris, a fanatical mob, knowing Priest- 

 ley's sympathies with the French revolutionists, at- 

 tacked his house and chapel, burning both and destroy- 

 ing a great number of valuable papers and scientific in- 

 struments. Priestley and his family escaped violence 

 by flight, but his most cherished possessions were de- 

 stroyed ; and three years later he quitted England for- 

 ever, removing to the United States, whose struggle 

 for liberty he had championed. The last ten years of 

 his life were spent at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, 

 where he continued his scientific researches. 



Early in his scientific career Priestley began inves- 

 tigations upon the " fixed air" of Dr. Black, and, oddly 

 enough, he was stimulated to this by the same thing 

 had influenced Black that is, his residence in the 

 immediate neighborhood of a brewery. It was during 

 the course of a series of experiments on this and other 

 gases that he made his greatest discovery, that of 

 oxygen, or " clephlogisticatcd air," as he called it. The 



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