Priestly, Joseph

prest'li, Joseph (1733-1804), one of the founders of modern chemistry. He was the son of an English cloth maker and was educated for the ministry, but got into theological difficulties and became a dissenting preacher. He was a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. He sympathized with the Americans during our Revolutionary War. At the time of the French Revolution his house at Birmingham was sacked and burned by a mob. Much of his apparatus and many valuable manuscripts were destroyed. Three years later he followed his sons to America and ended his days quietly at Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Priestly suffered the misfortune of living during the closing years of the old chemistry, rather than during the opening years of modern chemistry. His work was of vast importance to other chemists who followed him, and he is quite generally given the credit of discovering oxygen, an honor which he perhaps ought to share with another. See Chemistry