Background
Carl Wilhelm Scheele was born on December 9, 1742 in Stralsund, Germany into the family of a grain dealer and brewer from a respected German family.
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pharmaceutical chemist pharmacist
Carl Wilhelm Scheele was born on December 9, 1742 in Stralsund, Germany into the family of a grain dealer and brewer from a respected German family.
Scheele's formal education ended at age 14, when he was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Gothenburg.
In Malmö, Scheele's talents received their first recognition in the person of Anders Johan Retzius, who was later to become professor of chemistry and natural history at the University of Lund.
In 1765 Scheele removed to Malmo, and in 1768 to Stockholm.
While there he wrote an account of his experiments with cream of tartar, from which he had isolated tartaric acid, and sent it to T. O. Bergman, the leading chemist in Sweden.
A friendship, of mutual advantage, soon sprang up between the two men, and it has been said that Scheele was Bergman's greatest discovery.
His unremitting work, it is said, especially at night, exposing him to cold and draughts, induced a rheumatic attack which brought about his death.
Study of his original papers shows that his discoveries were not made at haphazard, but were the outcome of experiments carefully planned to verify inferences already drawn, and successfully designed to settle the point at issue in the simplest and most direct manner.
He left nothing in doubt if experiment would decide it, and he evidently did not consider that he had fully investigated any compound until he could both unmake and remake it.
His record as a discoverer of new substances is probably unequalled.
The analysis of manganese dioxide in 1774 led him to the discovery of chlorine and baryta; to the description of various salts of manganese itself, including the manganates and permanganates, and to the explanation of its action in colouring and decolourizing glass.
In 1775 he investigated arsenic acid and its reactions, discovering arseniuretted hydrogen and " Scheele's green " (copper arsenite), a process for preparing which on a large scale he published in 1778.
Papers published in 1776 were concerned with quartz, alum and clay and with the analysis of calculus vesicae from which for the first time he obtained uric acid.
In the following year he showed that plumbago consists essentially of carbon, and he published a record of estimations of the proportions of oxygen in the atmosphere, which he had carried on daily during the whole of 1778-three years before Cavendish.
In 1780 he proved that the acidity of sour milk is due to what was afterwards called lactic acid; and by boiling milk sugar with nitric acid he obtained mucic acid.
His next discovery, in 1781, was the composition of the mineral tungsten, since called scheelite (calcium tungstate), from which he obtained tungstic acid.
In 1782 he published some experiments on the formation of ether, and in 1783 examined the properties of glycerine, which he had discovered seven years before.
In the last years of his life he returned to the vegetable acids, and investigated citric, malic, oxalic and gallic acids.
The manuscript was in the hands of the printers in 1775, and most of the experimental work for it was done before 1773.
Although it starts from the erroneous basis of the phlogistic theory, it contains much matter of permanent value.
The former, "fire-air, " or oxygen, he prepared from "acid of nitre, " from saltpetre, from black oxide of manganese, from oxide of mercury and other substances, and there is little doubt but that he obtained it independently a considerable time before Priestley.
Scheele married the widow of his predecessor, Pohl, two days before he died, so that he could pass undisputed title to his pharmacy and his possessions to her.
