Scheele, CARL WILHELM,

Scheele, CARL WILHELM, chemist, was born on 19th December 1742, at Stralsund in Pomerania, then belonging to Sweden, and was apprenticed to a chemist at Gothenburg, and was afterwards chemist's assistant at Malmö, Stockholm, Upsala, and Köping (at the western end of Lake Mälar), and died at Köping, 19th May 1786. His whole life was devoted, with the absorbing passion of the lover of science and of nature, to chemical experiment and investigation. And, although his apparatus was very primitive and his means limited, he made a great number of discoveries of the utmost importance for the advance of chemistry. He discovered hydrofluoric, tartaric, benzoic, arsenious, molybdic, lactic, citric, malic, oxalic, gallic, and other acids. Chlorine, baryta, oxygen (1777), glycerine (1783), and sulphuretted hydrogen gas were all separated by him independently. He obtained the salts of manganese, and showed how manganese colours glass. The green pigment called Scheele's green, the arsenite of copper, derives its name from the chemist who first described it (see GREEN PIGMENTS), as does also the mineral scheelite or tungsten. He demonstrated in 1777 that the atmosphere consists chiefly of two gases, one, empyreal or fire-air (i.e. oxygen), supporting combustion, the other preventing it. This discovery of oxygen was made independently of Priestley's discovery three years before. In 1783 Scheele described prussic acid, which he proved to be the determining cause of the colouring matter in Prussian blue. He was a worker of wonderful accuracy, perseverance, and genius, and worked both analytically and synthetically. His papers were published in English by T. Beddoes (Lond. 1786), there being corresponding Latin, German, French, &c. editions; and in 1892 Baron Nordenskiöld published a number of his unedited letters and papers.