Joseph priestley y antoine lavoisier biography

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was a Dissenting theologian and an Enlightenment-era chemist. He is best known for his pioneering study of oxygen, although it occurred within the context of the now-rejected Renaissance theory of “phlogisticated air” which plagued European chemistry until late in his lifetime.

– Youth and Education –

Joseph Priestley was born on March 17, 1733, in Yorkshire, to clothier Jonas Priestley and his wife Mary Swift.

He was raised for his first several years by his grandfather, and then by an aunt. 

Priestley proved an extraordinarily intelligent youngster, memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism at just four years old and thus convincing his adoptive parents to send him to school.

His parents had been religious Dissentors and his aunt and uncle hoped his schooling would lead him to a career in the clergy. However, he had a falling-out with his church as a late teenager after growing convinced