Joseph Priestley was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist.
111 Facts About Joseph Priestley
2.
Joseph Priestley published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in electricity and other areas of science.
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Joseph Priestley was a close friend of, and worked in close association with Benjamin Franklin involving electricity experiments.
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Joseph Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism.
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Joseph Priestley believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium.
6.
The controversial nature of Joseph Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution, aroused public and governmental contempt; eventually forcing him to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church.
7.
Joseph Priestley spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
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Joseph Priestley was born in Birstall in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to an established English Dissenting family who did not conform to the Church of England.
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Joseph Priestley was the oldest of six children born to Mary Swift and Jonas Priestley, a finisher of cloth.
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Joseph Priestley was sent to live with his grandfather around the age of one.
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Joseph Priestley returned home five years later, after his mother died.
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Around 1749, Joseph Priestley became seriously ill and believed he was dying.
13.
Joseph Priestley's illness left him with a permanent stutter and he gave up any thoughts of entering the ministry at that time.
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Joseph Priestley eventually decided to return to his theological studies and, in 1752, matriculated at Daventry, a Dissenting academy.
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Joseph Priestley continued his intense study; this, together with the liberal atmosphere of the school, shifted his theology further leftward and he became a Rational Dissenter.
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Joseph Priestley later wrote that the book that influenced him the most, save the Bible, was David Hartley's Observations on Man.
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Joseph Priestley yearned for urban life and theological debate, whereas Needham Market was a small, rural town with a congregation wedded to tradition.
18.
Joseph Priestley presented a series of scientific lectures titled "Use of the Globes" that was more successful.
19.
Unlike many schoolmasters of the time, Joseph Priestley taught his students natural philosophy and even bought scientific instruments for them.
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In 1761, Joseph Priestley moved to Warrington in Cheshire and assumed the post of tutor of modern languages and rhetoric at the town's Dissenting academy, although he would have preferred to teach mathematics and natural philosophy.
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Joseph Priestley fitted in well at Warrington, and made friends quickly.
22.
Wedgwood and Joseph Priestley met rarely, but exchanged letters, advice on chemistry, and laboratory equipment.
23.
All of the books Joseph Priestley published while at Warrington emphasised the study of history; Joseph Priestley considered it essential for worldly success as well as religious growth.
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Joseph Priestley wrote histories of science and Christianity in an effort to reveal the progress of humanity and, paradoxically, the loss of a pure, "primitive Christianity".
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Joseph Priestley recommended modern languages instead of classical languages and modern rather than ancient history.
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Joseph Priestley believed that each age would improve upon the previous and that the study of history allowed people to perceive and to advance this progress.
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Since the study of history was a moral imperative for Joseph Priestley, he promoted the education of middle-class women, which was unusual at the time.
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Joseph Priestley designed two Charts to serve as visual study aids for his Lectures.
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The intellectually stimulating atmosphere of Warrington, often called the "Athens of the North" during the 18th century, encouraged Joseph Priestley's growing interest in natural philosophy.
30.
Joseph Priestley gave lectures on anatomy and performed experiments regarding temperature with another tutor at Warrington, his friend John Seddon.
31.
Joseph Priestley contrasted his narrative approach with Newton's analytical proof-like approach which did not facilitate future researchers to continue the inquiry.
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Joseph Priestley reported some of his own discoveries in the second section, such as the conductivity of charcoal and other substances and the continuum between conductors and non-conductors.
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Joseph Priestley's text became the standard history of electricity for over a century; Alessandro Volta, William Herschel, and Henry Cavendish all relied upon it.
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Joseph Priestley wrote a popular version of the History of Electricity for the general public titled A Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity.
35.
Joseph Priestley marketed the book with his brother Timothy, but unsuccessfully.
36.
When Joseph Priestley became its minister, Mill Hill Chapel was one of the oldest and most respected Dissenting congregations in England; however, during the early 18th century the congregation had fractured along doctrinal lines, and was losing members to the charismatic Methodist movement.
37.
Joseph Priestley believed that by educating the young, he could strengthen the bonds of the congregation.
38.
Joseph Priestley believed that the Corruptions was "the most valuable" work he ever published.
39.
Joseph Priestley founded the Theological Repository in 1768, a journal committed to the open and rational inquiry of theological questions.
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Joseph Priestley was therefore obliged to provide much of the journal's content himself.
41.
Joseph Priestley identified separate private and public spheres, contending that the government should have control only over the public sphere.
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Joseph Priestley defended the rights of Dissenters against the attacks of William Blackstone, an eminent legal theorist, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England had become the standard legal guide.
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Furious, Joseph Priestley lashed out with his Remarks on Dr Blackstone's Commentaries, correcting Blackstone's interpretation of the law, his grammar, and history.
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Joseph Priestley's science was eminently practical and he rarely concerned himself with theoretical questions; his model was his close friend, Benjamin Franklin.
45.
When he moved to Leeds, Joseph Priestley continued his electrical and chemical experiments.
46.
Joseph Priestley published the first volume of his projected history of experimental philosophy, The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light and Colours, in 1772.
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Joseph Priestley paid careful attention to the history of optics and presented excellent explanations of early optics experiments, but his mathematical deficiencies caused him to dismiss several important contemporary theories.
48.
Joseph Priestley followed the particle theory of light, influenced by the works of Reverend John Rowning and others.
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Joseph Priestley was considered for the position of astronomer on James Cook's second voyage to the South Seas, but was not chosen.
50.
Joseph Priestley then published a pamphlet with Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air.
51.
Joseph Priestley did not exploit the commercial potential of carbonated water, but others such as made fortunes from it.
52.
Joseph Priestley's friends wanted to find him a more financially secure position.
53.
In 1772, prompted by Richard Price and Benjamin Franklin, Lord Shelburne wrote to Joseph Priestley asking him to direct the education of his children and to act as his general assistant.
54.
Joseph Priestley became a political adviser to Shelburne, gathering information on parliamentary issues and serving as a liaison between Shelburne and the Dissenting and American interests.
55.
Joseph Priestley wrote his most important philosophical works during his years with Lord Shelburne.
56.
Joseph Priestley strongly suggested that there is no mind-body duality, and put forth a materialist philosophy in these works; that is, one founded on the principle that everything in the universe is made of matter that we can perceive.
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Joseph Priestley contended that discussing the soul is impossible because it is made of a divine substance, and humanity cannot perceive the divine.
58.
Joseph Priestley criticised those whose faith was shaped by books and fashion, drawing an analogy between the scepticism of educated men and the credulity of the masses.
59.
Joseph Priestley defended his friend in the pamphlet Letter to a Layman, on the Subject of the Rev Mr Lindsey's Proposal for a Reformed English Church, claiming that only the form of worship had been altered, not its substance, and attacking those who followed religion as a fashion.
60.
Joseph Priestley attended Lindsey's church regularly in the 1770s and occasionally preached there.
61.
Joseph Priestley continued to support institutionalised Unitarianism for the rest of his life, writing several Defenses of Unitarianism and encouraging the foundation of new Unitarian chapels throughout Britain and the United States.
62.
Joseph Priestley's experiments were almost entirely confined to "airs", and out of this work emerged his most important scientific texts: the six volumes of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air.
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Joseph Priestley developed a "nitrous air test" to determine the "goodness of air".
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Joseph Priestley isolated carbon monoxide, but apparently did not realise that it was a separate "air".
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Joseph Priestley called the new substance "dephlogisticated air", which he made in the famous experiment by focusing the sun's rays on a sample of mercuric oxide.
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Joseph Priestley first tested it on mice, who surprised him by surviving quite a while entrapped with the air, and then on himself, writing that it was "five or six times better than common air for the purpose of respiration, inflammation, and, I believe, every other use of common atmospherical air".
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Joseph Priestley assembled his oxygen paper and several others into a second volume of Experiments and Observations on Air, published in 1776.
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Joseph Priestley did not emphasise his discovery of "dephlogisticated air" but instead argued in the preface how important such discoveries were to rational religion.
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Joseph Priestley's paper narrated the discovery chronologically, relating the long delays between experiments and his initial puzzlements; thus, it is difficult to determine when exactly Priestley "discovered" oxygen.
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Some contemporaries speculated that Joseph Priestley's outspokenness had hurt Shelburne's political career.
71.
Joseph Priestley accepted the ministerial position at New Meeting on the condition that he be required to preach and teach only on Sundays, so that he would have time for his writing and scientific experiments.
72.
Joseph Priestley was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782.
73.
Many of the friends that Joseph Priestley made in Birmingham were members of the Lunar Society, a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who assembled monthly to discuss their work.
74.
Joseph Priestley was asked to join this unique society and contributed much to the work of its members.
75.
In 1777, Antoine Lavoisier had written Memoire sur la combustion en general, the first of what proved to be a series of attacks on phlogiston theory; it was against these attacks that Joseph Priestley responded in 1783.
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Joseph Priestley published several more scientific papers in Birmingham, the majority attempting to refute Lavoisier.
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Joseph Priestley was a natural philosopher, concerned with the economy of nature and obsessed with an idea of unity, in theology and in nature.
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Joseph Priestley followed up in 1786 with the provocatively titled book, An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ, compiled from Original Writers, proving that the Christian Church was at first Unitarian.
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In 1785, while Joseph Priestley was engaged in a pamphlet war over Corruptions, he published The Importance and Extent of Free Enquiry, claiming that the Reformation had not really reformed the church.
80.
Joseph Priestley wrote a series of Letters to William Pitt and Letters to Burke in an attempt to persuade them otherwise, but these publications only further inflamed the populace against him.
81.
Dissenters such as Joseph Priestley who supported the French Revolution came under increasing suspicion as scepticism regarding the revolution grew.
82.
Paradoxically, a secular statesman, Burke, argued against science and maintained that religion should be the basis of civil society, whereas a Dissenting minister, Joseph Priestley, argued that religion could not provide the basis for civil society and should be restricted to one's private life.
83.
Joseph Priestley supported the campaign to abolish the British slave trade, and published a sermon in 1788 in which he declared that nobody treated enslaved people "with so much cruelty as the English".
84.
Amid fears of violence, Joseph Priestley was convinced by his friends not to attend.
85.
Joseph Priestley spent several days hiding with friends until he was able to travel safely to London.
86.
Joseph Priestley tried to obtain restitution from the government for the destruction of his Birmingham property, but he was never fully reimbursed.
87.
Joseph Priestley published An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham, which indicted the people of Birmingham for allowing the riots to occur and for "violating the principles of English government".
88.
The couple's friends urged them to leave Britain and emigrate to either France or the new United States, even though Joseph Priestley had received an appointment to preach for the Gravel Pit Meeting congregation.
89.
Joseph Priestley was minister between 1793 and 1794 and the sermons he preached there, particularly the two Fast Sermons, reflect his growing millenarianism, his belief that the end of the world was fast approaching.
90.
Joseph Priestley's works had always had a millennial cast, but after the beginning of the French Revolution, this strain increased.
91.
Joseph Priestley accepted French citizenship, considering it "the greatest of honours".
92.
Joseph Priestley declined the honour, on the grounds that he was not fluent in French.
93.
Five weeks after Joseph Priestley left, William Pitt's administration began arresting radicals for seditious libel, resulting in the famous 1794 Treason Trials.
94.
Joseph Priestley declined their entreaties, hoping to avoid political discord in his new country.
95.
Joseph Priestley turned down an opportunity to teach chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
96.
Joseph Priestley allowed himself to fall too heavily under Elizabeth and Cooper's influences, even helping hawk a seditious handbill Cooper had printed, around Point township, and across the Susquehanna at Sunbury.
97.
Joseph Priestley confronted his father, expressing John and Benjamin Vaughan's unease, his own wife's concerns about Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley's dietary care, and his own concerns at the closeness of Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley and Thomas Cooper's relationship, and their adverse influence on Dr Priestley; but this only led to a further estrangement between William and his sister-in-law.
98.
When, a while later, Joseph Priestley's household suffered a bout of food poisoning, perhaps from milk sickness or a bacterial infection, Elizabeth Ryland-Joseph Priestley, falsely accused William of having poisoned the family's flour.
99.
Joseph Priestley continued the educational projects that had always been important to him, helping to establish the "Northumberland Academy" and donating his library to the fledgling institution.
100.
Joseph Priestley exchanged letters regarding the proper structure of a university with Thomas Jefferson, who used this advice when founding the University of Virginia.
101.
Joseph Priestley tried to continue his scientific investigations in America with the support of the American Philosophical Society, to which he had been previously elected a member in 1785.
102.
Joseph Priestley was hampered by lack of news from Europe; unaware of the latest scientific developments, Priestley was no longer on the forefront of discovery.
103.
Joseph Priestley died on the morning of 6 February 1804, aged seventy and was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
104.
The 19th-century French naturalist George Cuvier, in his eulogy of Joseph Priestley, praised his discoveries while at the same time lamenting his refusal to abandon phlogiston theory, calling him "the father of modern chemistry [who] never acknowledged his daughter".
105.
Joseph Priestley published more than 150 works on topics ranging from political philosophy to education to theology to natural philosophy.
106.
Joseph Priestley led and inspired British radicals during the 1790s, paved the way for utilitarianism, and helped found Unitarianism.
107.
Joseph Priestley has been remembered by the towns in which he served as a reforming educator and minister and by the scientific organisations he influenced.
108.
In 2016 the University of Huddersfield renamed the building housing its Applied Sciences department as the Joseph Priestley Building, as part of an effort to rename all campus buildings after prominent local figures.
109.
Joseph Priestley's work is recognised by a National Historic Chemical Landmark designation for his discovery of oxygen, made on 1 August 1994, at the Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland, Penn.
110.
Papers of Joseph Priestley are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.
111.
The most exhaustive biography of Joseph Priestley is Robert Schofield's two-volume work; several one-volume treatments exist, all somewhat older: Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe.