SCHEELE, CHARLES-WILLIAM, an eminent Swedish chemist, was b. at Stralsund, 1742, and after receiving a brief and incomplete education was apprenticed to an apothecary at Gothenburg, where he laid the foundation of his knowledge of chemistry. In 1767 he settled at Stockholm as an apothecary; and in 1770 removed to Upsala, where at that time the celebrated Bergmann was professor of chemistry. It was during his residence at Upsala that he carried on those investigations in chemical analysis which proved so fruitful in important and brilliant discoveries, and placed their author by the side of Linntrus and Berzelius, his countrymen—in the front rank of science. In 1777 he removed to Kilping to take possession of a vacant apothecary business, but died of ague fever, May 21, 1786, at a time when he was receiving the most tempting offers from land to persuade him to settle in that country. The chief of his discoveries were tartaric acid (1770), chlorine (1774), baryta (1774), oxy gin (1777), and glscerinc (1784), the second last of which had been previously made known through the labors of Priestley, though Scheene was not aware of this till after his own discovery of it in 1777. In experiment
ing ow arsenic and its acid, he discovered the arsenite of copper, which is known as a pigment tinder the name of Scheele's green or mineral green. In 1782, during au eminently delicate and subtle investigation to determine the nature of the'coloring matter in Prus sian blue, lie succeeded in obtaining, for the first time, prussic aid hi a separate form. The mode and results of his various investigations were communicated from time to time, in the form of memoirs, to the academy of Stockholm, of which he was an asso ciate, and also in his chief work, the Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire (1777), and in an Essay on the Coloring Matter in Prussian Blue (1782).