Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire

Book excerpt: Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) was a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist, born in Stralsund, Western Pomerania, Germany. Instead of becoming a carpenter like his father, Scheele decided to become a pharmacist. His career began with his apprenticeship at an apothecary in Gothenburg when he was only fourteen years old. He retained this position for eight years before becoming an apothecary's clerk in Malmo. Then Scheele worked as a pharmacist in Stockholm, from 1770-1775 in Uppsala, and later in Koping. In 1776, he was able to establish his own pharmacy. He was the discoverer of many chemical substances, most notably discovering oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), molybdenum and chlorine before Humphry Davy. Scheele described the discovery of oxygen and nitrogen (1772-1773), in his only book, Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer (Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire) in 1777. He called it "fire air" because it supported combustion, but he explained oxygen using phlogistical terms because he did not believe that his discovery disproved the phlogiston theory.