The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson.  Riverhead Books, 2008.  978-1-59448-852-8.   This is a biography of Joseph Priestly:

• He discovered that, although animals put in a closed box with no source of air died pretty quickly, plants put in a similar box did not die.  This led him to conceive a primitive form of the idea of the cycle of nature. (Note 1.)
• He discovered oxygen (apparently not really based on the previous discovery above), but did not understand what he discovered.  He continued to believe in phlogiston to the end of his life.
• He invented soda water because he lived near a brewery.
• He cofounded the first Unitarian Church in England and wrote extensively about the corruptions of Christianity such as the Trinity.
• He supported America’s independence and the French Revolution.  Concerning the latter, he exhibited considerable naiveté.
• Because of the last two things listed, a mob burned down his house and laboratory, his church and the house of one of his supporters.  In consequence he moved to America.
• He engaged in much correspondence with Thomas Jefferson with the result that Jefferson was relieved to find that he could still consider himself a Christian, of the Unitarian variety, of course.  (Nowadays Unitarians don’t consider themselves Christian but then they did.)
• He wrote a bunch of sharp attacks on John Adams, in particular accusing him of dastardly behavior in signing the Alien and Sedition Act, and of opposing further advances of science.  Guess which attack made Adams the most furious.  (The latter.)
• Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were bitter enemies for many years, but engaged in an extensive and reasonably polite correspondence during the last years of their lives.  Much of the correspondence involved Adams defending himself against Priestley’s criticisms.

They never taught me all that in school!  By the way, I probably got all sorts of things wrong in the summary above.  So you’d better read the book from cover to cover.

Scientists should read this book, too; it gives them a new sense of how important they were regarded by the politicians in England, America and France, in comparison to these days.  Politicians should read this book as well, but they won’t.

Popular science

The author claims (pp. 34-35) that Priestley’s work (Note 2) explaining the wonderful new discoveries about electricity constitute the first popular science book (at least of the narrative kind.)

Note

1.  See Priestley’s Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, Volume III, Book 9, Part 1. (1790).

2.  Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (1775).

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