Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Biography

Instead of becoming a carpenter like his father, Scheele decided to become a pharmacist. His career as a pharmacist in Stockholm, from 1770-1775 in Uppsala, and later in Köping. In 1776, he was able to establish his own pharmacy, which he had purchased from the previous owner's widow. The two married, but Scheele passed away 48 hours later.

Scientific career

Despite his lack of a thorough education, he clearly had an instinctive flair for experimentation. Scheele's limited formal instruction makes his successes all the more surprising. The schooling which Scheele did have was private and it was through this education that he exhibited an inclination to study the art of the pharmacist. He put substantial effort into learning as much as he could in science, even staying up late at night reading different chemical books.

Unlike scientists such as Isaac Newton who were more widely recognized, Scheele had a humble position in a small town, and preferred that to the grandeur of an extravagant house, yet he was still able to make significant scientific discoveries. Scheele turned down high-paying offers by prestigious European academies. Frederick II offered him a Berlin position, and the English government offered him a generous salary for his work, but Scheele remained at his pharmacy to serve his faithful customers.

Scheele made many discoveries in Antoine Lavoisier, the second to quantitatively isolate the gas, (August 1774), who published a paper with the new name in 1775.

Scheele described the discovery of mercury poisoning.

Existing theories before Scheele

By the time he was a teenager, Scheele had learned the dominant theory on gases in the 1770s, the phlogiston theory.

Debunking the theory of phlogiston

Historians of science no longer question the role of Carl Scheele in the overturning of the phlogiston.

Scheele's study of the gas not yet named Lavoisier who was able to grasp the significance of the results.

In addition to his joint recognition for the discovery of oxygen, Scheele is argued to have been the first to discover other chemical elements such as phosphorus (1769), leading Sweden to become one of the world's leading producers of matches.

Scheele made one other very important scientific discovery in 1774, arguably more revolutionary than his isolation of chlorine.

See also

• Scheelite
• Scheele's Green
• Pharmacist
• Pharmacy

Bibliography

• Abbott, David. (1983). Biographical Dictionary of Scientists: Chemists. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 126-127. 
• Bell, Madison S. (2005). Lavoisier in the Year One. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 
• Cardwell, D.S.L. (1971). From Watt to Clausius: The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Age. Heinemann: London, 60-61. ISBN 0-435-54150-1. 
• Dobbin, L. (trans.) (1931). Collected Papers of Carl Wilhelm Scheele. 
• Farber, Eduard ed. (1961). Great Chemists. New York: Interscience Publishers, 255-261. 
• Greenberg, Arthur. (2000). A Chemical History Tour: Picturing Chemistry from Alchemy to Modern Molecular Science. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 135-137. 
• Greenberg, Arthur. (2003). The Art of Chemistry: Myths, Medicines and Materials. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 161-166. 

• Schofield, Robert E (2004). The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773-1804. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 
• Shectman (2003). Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the 18th Century. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 
• Sootin, Harry (1960). 12 Pioneers of Science. New York: Vanguard Press. 

References

• Excerpts drom the Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire