Priestley, Joseph 1733-1804
English clergyman and chemist

Born in Fieldhead, Leeds, he spent four years at a dissenting academy in Daventry and in 1755 became minister at Needham Market, and wrote The Scripture Doctrine of Remission. In 1758 he went to Nantwich, and in 1761 became a tutor at Warrington Academy. During visits to London he met Benjamin Franklin, who supplied him with books for his History of Electricity (1767). In 1767 he became minister of a chapel at Mill Hill, Leeds, where he took up the study of chemistry. In 1774, as literary companion, he accompanied Lord Shelburne on a continental tour and also published Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. But at home he was branded as an atheist in spite of his Disquisition relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), affirming our hope of resurrection from revelation. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1772, to the St Petersburg Academy in 1780, and became minister of a chapel in Birmingham the same year. His History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ (1786) occasioned renewed controversy, and his reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution led a Birmingham mob to break into his house and destroy its contents (1791). He then settled in Hackney, London, and in 1794 moved to the USA, where he was well received. He died in Northumberland, Pennyslvania, believing himself to hold the doctrines of the primitive Christians, and looking for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Priestley was a pioneer in the chemistry of gases, and one of the discoverers of oxygen (see Carl Wilhelm Scheele).

Bibliography: F W Gibbs, Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth (1965)