The Revolutionary Mind of Scientist Joseph Priestley: A Trailblazer Ahead of His Time
Joseph Priestley was born on March 12, 1733, in a small town near the city of Leeds, England. His father was a weaver – a poor man who left 7-year-old Joseph an orphan. The child was brought up by one of his aunts. The atmosphere there was such that everyone was free to express their views on everything. Chachi was a member of a small religious sect called Disenters, opposed to traditional Christianity. So the aunt sent the boy Joseph to a new institution to be initiated into Christianity. Arriving there, Joseph showed considerable ability – particularly in the study of languages. He acquired equal mastery in French, Italian, German, Arabic and Aramaic. But he had a speech impediment, as a result of which, even after graduation, he got a job in a very small church, where his salary was less than 15 rupees per week. But the expenses had to be met somehow, or the point was that Priestley was a very industrious man. He used to teach children in the village school all day and even after returning from there he used to do private tuitions. Despite all this, he took so much time that he wrote an English grammar. A few days later he got a job as a language teacher at the Academy of Disenters. While teaching here, he also started attending chemistry classes. He started being counted among the local scientists.
During these days, Benjamin Franklin had come to England to seek support for American independence. Who was also a traveling ambassador to the new colonies of America. Franklin arrived here as a scientist, and indeed a scientist he was. Priestley came running to this great electrician of his era and impressed by his personality, he also wrote a book ‘History of the Present State of Electricity’, the immediate result of which was that in 1766 the Royal Society elected him as its member. took. And incidentally, Priestley also believed in the truth of the American Revolution, which led to his lifelong friendship with Benjamin Franklin. And this So we can easily imagine that the history of electricity written by Priestley was not only a collection of known facts, but many fundamental tests were also compiled together.
He was still a priest of the church. Used to do scientific tests only in the spare time of the day. • He was appointed as the head priest of a church in Leeds. Here he was paid very little, and now the maintenance of a family was also on him. So he rented a small house next to a large tavern, and in fact it was the smell of the tavern that drove him to chemical experiments. He also took the permission of the tavern owners to use the gas rising from their huge trunks for his experiments. He made a microscopic study of this gas and observed that a burning match goes into it and gets extinguished. Priestley scoured scientific texts to find more ways to make this ‘stable’ gas. Today everyone knows its name – carbon dioxide. But Priestley’s good luck was that he successfully dissolved carbon dioxide in water, thanks to which, as we said above, he also got a gold medal.
His success was honored even in France. The French Academy nominated him as its member. And the most important thing for science was that it was completely freed from wasting its time in the work of the Church. And it happened just in time – the people who flocked to his church to hear the priest preach were finding it hard to bear that all kinds of bottles were lying around their preacher, bottles of different kinds. The bad smell is always rising. And the truth is that a good part of Priestley’s day was spent in the bar. Lord Shelburne, a studious politician, made Priestley his librarian. There was also a laboratory with the library. Shelburne arranged for Priestley to live in London in the winter and his private palace at Calne in the summer, with laboratories at both places for research in science, and with this an annual salary of £250.
Priestley published the main tests of his scientific life only after coming in contact with Lord Shelburne. He accompanied Shelburne to France, where he met Lavoisier. And the credit for this goes to the It should be found that Priestley’s ‘phlogiston-free’ gas is a new element – he immediately recognized it, and he also named it – oxygen.
In 1780, the Lunar Society, by invitation, elected him as its member. Famous scientists and industrialists of the time were its members: Josiah Bedswood, the master of the pottery craft, James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin. Lunatic means mad, and the assembly of these lunatics used to be held only on the Monday near the full moon. This date was chosen so that there would be moonlight on the way back home after the six-hour session and dinner. Priestley would come here to get good food and get some new ideas for contemplation. Some wealthy members of the Lunar Society also agreed to fund Priestley’s investigations. But Priestley was an idealist who “did not approve of any monetary gain by any of his tests; He declared these tests to be the public property of theindividuals.” Nor did he acknowledge that he continued to acknowledge gigantic amounts of cash from these crazy people. He never accepted a penny more than what was needed on the tests.
But it seems that this quiet life of Joseph Priestley, that of a scientist, could not last long. There was some pastoralism in his vein, some idealism, due to which he came in the grip of French Revolution. He preached freedom, equality, fraternity openly and with great enthusiasm in his writings, and also supported the fact that the fields of both religion and state should be separated. In 1775, Edmund Burke tried to get the British government to make some kind of compromise with its new colonies, today the same Edmund Burke was an opponent of the French Revolution, and he also attacked Priestley in a lecture in the House of Commons, The result of which was that on July 14, 1751, when the second anniversary of the French Revolution was being celebrated, the blind public got excited and stormed Priestley’s house. An eye-witness account of that incident is found as follows:
“People suddenly forced their way in, emptied the windows and shelves, broke the furniture, tore books from the library, and smashed all the chemical equipment in the laboratory; and
The manuscripts, which had been compiled after 20 years of labor and research, were scattered in rags, it was such a loss that Priestley could not regret until his death. Fortunately, Dr. Priestley and his family had escaped from there. Leaving Birmingham, he came to London. As the French Revolution turned into an empire of terror, the public turned against Priestley. He was called a traitor and an atheist. Even his old friends from the Royal Society were no longer on his side. In 1794, Priestley boarded a ship and reached America.
When Dr. Priestley landed in New York City, the public welcomed him with open arms. Religious, scientific and political leaders of the country welcomed him. Once in America, he reconciled with his sons as well. Who had come to Pennsylvania two years earlier and had settled in Northumberland. All kinds of positions and honors were given to him – Pastor of the Unitarian Church, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He began to be invited to lectures. Benjamin Franklin opened the doors to Philadelphia, and Priestley met with Thomas Jefferson, had tea with George Washington.
But it was his own choice to indulge himself in a laboratory in the quiet of Northumberland itself. Today his house has become a national museum, where all the cups, bottles, pots, etc used by Priestley himself in chemical research are safe till date, and anyone can come and see them.
What are those inventions on the basis of which we give Priestley such a high place among the scientists and chemists of the world? Firstly, he invented that wonderful element ‘oxygen’. His method of preparing oxygen was very simple but beautiful and effective. He took a bottle for this and filled some mercury in it and put some sample of mercury oxide. Now he turned this bottle upside down on a cup of mercury. And now, focusing the sun’s rays on the mercury oxide through a magnifying glass, heat is applied to it: if some gas is liberated by a chemical reaction, the mercury will naturally fall down, and if some of the gas in this reaction If consumed, the same mercury is slightly above that.
Will rise towards: Priestley observed that a lot of gas is being released from the mercury oxide. Incidentally, he also observed that a burning candle glowed even more when it was taken into this gas. Not only this, he also tested this gas on some rats and found that rats live longer in a vessel filled with oxygen than in another vessel filled with relatively minor air.
Priestley also observed that these flowers and plants “opposite the life-process of animals, so that a kind of balanced sweetness is maintained in the atmosphere.” He took a plant and put it in a bottle from which all the oxygen had been removed. And noted after a few days that the candle could be re-lighted by moving it. In this way, the method of preparing nature’s oxygen was also known.
Another important discovery was made by Priestley after setting up his new laboratory in Pennsylvania. Here, the invention of another useful, but toxic gas – carbon monoxide became possible at his hands. Carbon monoxide is produced when coal, gasoline or lighting oil, or any other fuel containing carbon, is mixed with less oxygen than is necessary to burn an object to ashes. If the motor is started in a closed garage, it often starts to go off accidentally, because the oxygen is quickly exhausted, instead of the carbon dioxide (of soda water), carbon monoxide is produced, which is the opposite. is poisonous. We can generate carbon monoxide whenever we want. And it is commonly used in our homes to prepare coffee, or to keep the rooms warm.
Joseph Priestley had also discovered another gas which was experienced by Sir Humphrey Davy in a strange form. After accidentally inhaling some of the vapors, Davy describes, “It raised my pulse by more than 20, and I started dancing like a madman in my laboratory.” This gas is often called ‘laughing gas’, and dentists use it to extract painful molars to ease the patient’s discomfort. chemicals
Its name is Knight’s Oxide. The people of America can be proud that how many such persons
[ He has given shelter from time to time, on whom only calamities and punishments came in their own country. Joseph Priestley was also one of those afflicted. Priestley died in 1854, at the age of 80.
Do you remember the last time you drank a bottle of soda water? Do you know that Americans spend 5,00,00,00,000 rupees annually on ice cream, soda, soda pop, coca-cola, ginger ale, and soda water? When Joseph Priestley received a gold medal for inventing a new drink by mixing carbon dioxide in water, he did not even dream that he had given birth to a new business of soda water, on which billions of rupees are spent annually. may come But we consider Priestley a giant of science – not because he invented soda water, but because he is the discoverer of ‘Pran-Sanjivani’ (Gas of Life) in the form of oxygen.