Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Carl Wilhelm Scheele was born on December 9, 1742, in Stralsund (then Swedish Pomerania). Apprenticed to an apothecary in Gothenburg at age fourteen, he taught himself chemistry through tireless nocturnal experiments, acquiring an extraordinary experimental intuition.

Working in Uppsala and later running his own pharmacy in Köping, Scheele discovered oxygen around 1771–1772 (prior to Joseph Priestley, though his publisher delayed printing his Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer). He isolated and identified chlorine, molybdenum, tungsten, barium, manganese, and discovered organic acids including citric, lactic, malic, oxalic, and tartaric acid, as well as hydrogen cyanide and glycerol. Accustomed to tasting his chemical preparations, he died prematurely of heavy metal poisoning at age forty-three.