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Oxygen is the third most abundant chemical element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium. [68] About 0.9% of the Sun's mass is oxygen. [19] Oxygen constitutes 49.2% of the Earth's crust by mass [69] as part of oxide compounds such as silicon dioxide and is the most abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (German:, Swedish: [ˈɧêːlɛ]; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786 [2]) was a German Swedish [3] pharmaceutical chemist.. Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, nitrogen, and chlorine, among others.
Photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms that produced O 2 as a byproduct lived long before the first build-up of free oxygen in the atmosphere, [5] perhaps as early as 3.5 billion years ago. The oxygen cyanobacteria produced would have been rapidly removed from the oceans by weathering of reducing minerals, [citation needed] most notably ferrous ...
In 1773, Swedish German [54] chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen, which he called "fire air", but did not immediately publish his achievement. [55] In 1774, English chemist Joseph Priestley independently isolated oxygen in its gaseous state, calling it "dephlogisticated air", and published his work before Scheele.
He discovered that air is not a single substance and contains a life-giving substance – later called oxygen – 170 years before Scheele's discovery of the element. He correctly identified this "food of life" with the gas (also oxygen) given off by heating nitre ( saltpetre ). [ 1 ]
Joseph Priestley FRS (/ ˈ p r iː s t l i /; [3] 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, Unitarian, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator and classical liberal political theorist. [4]
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Perey discovered it as a decay product of 227 Ac. [177] Francium was the last element to be discovered in nature, rather than synthesized in the lab, although four of the "synthetic" elements that were discovered later (plutonium, neptunium, astatine, and promethium) were eventually found in trace amounts in nature as well. [178]