Contributors of Chemistry

It was not until the era of the ancient Greeks that we have any record of how people tried to explain the chemical changes they observed and used. At that time, natural objects were thought to consist of only four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

Modern Chemistry

The 16^th and 17^th centuries saw the beginnings of what we now recognize as modern chemistry. During this period, great advances were made in metallurgy, the extraction of metals from ores, and the first systematic quantitative experiments were carried out. In 1661, the Englishman Robert Boyle (1627–91) published The Sceptical Chymist, which described the relationship between the pressure and the volume of air. More important, Boyle defined an element as a substance that cannot be broken down into two or more simpler substances by chemical means. This led to the identification of a large number of elements, many of which were metals. Ironically, Boyle himself never thought that metals were elements.

In the 18th century, the English clergyman Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) discovered oxygen gas and found that many carbon-containing materials burn vigorously in oxygen present in the atmosphere.

His most important contribution was the law of conservation of mass, which states that in any chemical reaction, the mass of the substances that react equals the mass of the products that are formed. That is, in a chemical reaction, mass is neither lost nor destroyed.

Can you mention some other scientists who contribute to the development of chemistry?