Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Carl Wilhelm Scheele was a German and Swedish Pomeranian pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit. For example, Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen, and chlorine before Humphry Davy, among others. Scheele discovered organic acids tartaric, oxalic, uric, lactic, and citric, as well as hydrofluoric, hydrocyanic, and arsenic acids. He preferred speaking German to Swedish his whole life, as German was commonly spoken among Swedish pharmacists.

Biography

Scheele was born in Stralsund, in western Pomerania. Scheele's father, Joachim (or Johann) Christian Scheele, was a grain dealer and brewer from a respected German family. His mother was Margaretha Eleanore Warnekros.

Friends of Scheele's parents taught him the art of reading prescriptions and the meaning of chemical and pharmaceutical signs. Then, in 1757, at the age of fourteen, Carl was sent to Gothenburg as an apprentice pharmacist to another family friend and apothecary, Martin Andreas Bauch. Scheele retained this position for eight years. During this time he ran experiments late into the night and read the works of Nicolas Lemery, Caspar Neumann, Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel and Georg Ernst Stahl (the champion of the phlogiston theory). Much of Scheele's later theoretical speculations were based upon Stahl.

In 1765 Scheele worked under the progressive and well informed apothecary P. M. Kjellström in Malmö, and became acquainted with Anders Jahan Retzius who was a lecturer at the University of Lund and later a professor of chemistry at Stockholm. Scheele arrived in Stockholm between 1767 and 1769 and worked as a pharmacist. During this period he discovered tartaric acid and with his friend, Retzius, studied the relation of quicklime to calcium carbonate. While in the capital, he also became acquainted with figures including Abraham Bäck, Peter Jonas Bergius, Bengt Bergius and Carl Friedreich von Schultzenheim.

In the fall of 1770 Scheele became director of the laboratory of the great pharmacy of Locke, at Uppsala, which is about 40 miles north of Stockholm. The laboratory supplied chemicals to Professor of Chemistry Torbern Bergman. A friendship developed between Scheele and Bergman after Scheele analyzed a reaction which Bergman and his assistant, Johan Gottlieb Gahn, could not resolve.

The reaction was between melted saltpetre and acetic acid that produced a red vapor. Further study of this reaction later led to Scheele's discovery of oxygen. Based upon this friendship and respect, Scheele was given free use of Bergman's laboratory. Both men were profiting from their working relationship. In 1774 Scheele was nominated by Peter Jonas Bergius to be a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was elected February 4, 1775. In 1775 Scheele also managed for a short time a pharmacy in Köping. Between the end of 1776 and the beginning of 1777 Scheele established his own business there.

On October 29, 1777, Scheele took his seat for the first and only time at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences and on November 11 passed the examination as apothecary before the Royal Medical College, doing so with the highest honours. After his return to Köping he devoted himself, outside of his business, to scientific researches which resulted in a long series of important papers.

Death

In the fall of 1785, Scheele began to suffer from symptoms described as kidney disease. In early 1786, he also contracted a disease of the skin, which, combined with kidney problems, so enfeebled him that he could foresee an early death. With this in mind, he 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.

While Scheele's experiments generated substances which have long since been found to be hazardous, the compounds and elements he used to start his experiments were dangerous to begin with, especially heavy metals. Like most of his contemporaries, in an age where there were few methods of chemical characterisation, Scheele would smell and taste any new substances he discovered. Cumulative exposure to arsenic, mercury, lead, their compounds and perhaps hydrofluoric acid which he had discovered, as well as other substances took their toll on Scheele, who died at the early age of 43, on 21 May 1786, at his home in Köping. Doctors said that he died of mercury poisoning.

Apotekare och kemist.

Known for: Discovered oxygen (independently), molybdenum, tungsten and chlorine English Wikipedia Link

• http://www.nad.riksarkivet.se/sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=6369

Scheele har gett sitt namn åt ett tiotal vägar, gator och torg i olika svenska orter, till exempel Scheelelaboratoriet på Karolinska institutet, det alltid öppna jourapoteket C W Scheele på Klarabergsgatan i Stockholm och en högstadieskola i Köping.

Till 200-årsminnet av hans födelse utgav Postverket en serie frimärken med hans porträtt.

Han står staty i nordöstra delen av Humlegården i Stockholm, och nedanför Köpings kyrka i Köping.

Scheele utbildades som apotekarlärling i Göteborg, som gesäll i Malmö, på apoteket Korpen hos apotekare Scharenberg i Stockholm och Uppsala och fick senare privilegier till att driva apoteket i Köping. De flesta av hans arbeten publicerades i en svit artiklar i Kungliga Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar, och han räknas som upptäckare av en lång rad av både organiska och oorganiska kemiska substanser. Hans upptäckt av det ämne som senare skulle döpas till syre 1772-1773 publicerades dock år 1777 i hans enda bok Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer (Kemisk avhandling om luft och eld)*. Scheele använde emellertid själv inte denna term, som istället introducerades av den franske kemisten Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

Scheele upptäckte inte några grundämnen i senare tids mening med begreppet. Han var först med att analysera och beskriva en mängd substanser, vilka av senare kemister skulle beskrivas som grundämnen. Dessa är klor (1774), mangan (1774), molybden (1778), volfram (1781) och barium. Han var också först med att identifiera åtskilliga ämnen som senare skulle betraktas som sammansatta molekyler, bland annat glycerol, vätecyanid (blåsyra), citronsyra, vätesulfid och vätefluorid.

Scheele invaldes 1775 som ledamot nummer 209 av Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien.

• Avhandlingen Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer publicerades 2004, som faksimil av Projekt Runeberg.

Källa: Svenska Wikipedia

• En biografi skrevs av Axel Krook för Svenska Familj-Journalens Ett fosterländskt Bilder-galleri. XLII. Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
• En biografi över Carl Wilhelm Scheeles liv och arbete författad av Harald Wieselgren, 1889, finns publicerad på Projekt Runeberg
• http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wilhelm_Scheele
• https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Sch%C3%A9ele