PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH

born , March 13, 1733, Birstall Fieldhead, near Leeds, Yorkshire, Eng. died Feb. 6, 1804, Northumberland, Pa., U.S. English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental science. He is best remembered as one of the discoverers of the element oxygen. Additional reading The best book-length biography, which does justice to all aspects of Priestley's work, is F.W. Gibbs, Joseph Priestley (1965). A popular description of Priestley's discoveries in chemistry is in Kenneth Davis, The Cautionary Scientists: Priestley, Lavoisier, and the Founding of Modern Chemistry (1966).