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Oxygen was discovered about 1772 by a Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who obtained it by heating potassium nitrate, mercuric oxide, and many other substances.
Oxygen was discovered about 1772 by a Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who obtained it by heating potassium nitrate, mercuric oxide, and many other substances. An English chemist, Joseph Priestley , independently discovered oxygen in 1774 by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide and published his findings the same year, three years before Scheele published.