Tag: Joseph Priestley
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The periodic table of the elements
In this system hydrogen is assigned the number one, lithium is three, carbon six, nitrogen seven, oxygen eight, etc. The elements are organized in rows or periods and columns or groups according to their atomic weight. The elements were discovered beginning in the 18th century when the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen (1772),…
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Physicians and photosynthesis
JMS PearceHull, England The importance of plants in nutrition and in the environment of human and animal species needs no emphasis. How plants obtain their food and how they grow were unsolved mysteries until photosynthesis was discovered. It was generally believed that plants obtained food and energy directly from the soil alone. Three medical doctors…
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John Bostock and hay fever
JMS PearceHull, England Before the 1800s, hay fever, now estimated as affecting 5–10% of Western populations, was not widely recognized by physicians. James MacCulloch MD FRS, a doctor and geologist, in 1828 was the first to use the term hay fever, which he said was “a well-known disorder.”1 The surgeon William Gordon used the term…
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The X Club
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Charles Babbage, who conceived the first automatic digital computer, published in 1830 Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. This stimulated the formation of several new groups that aimed to further scientific progress and exchange of ideas. These were distinct from Britain’s nineteenth century gentlemen’s social clubs and were…