In today’s world, the story of Carl Wilhelm Scheele sounds fantastic. This great researcher and experimenter never set foot in a university, worked in an ordinary pharmacy, and largely revolutionized 18th-century chemistry.
Scheele was born on a December day in 1742 in Stralsund – a port city that then belonged to Sweden. His family belonged to what we would now call the middle class. His father’s acquaintances taught the boy to read prescriptions and understand chemical and pharmaceutical symbols. Perhaps the young man could have gone to study at a prestigious institution, but at 14, Carl became an apprentice to a pharmacist in Gothenburg. His real school became the shelves with vials.
The young man proved incredibly curious. While other apprentices yawned with boredom, mixing powders at the mentor’s direction, Scheele was tormented by questions. Why does this substance change color? What happens when it’s heated? What if you combine this with that?
Pharmacies of that time were something between a chemical laboratory and a shop of wonders. Exotic materials from around the world were stored there, and young Scheele gained access to this treasure trove. After completing his apprenticeship, Carl moved to Malmö. Later he lived in Stockholm, Uppsala, and continued experimenting. In 1775, he acquired his own pharmacy in the town of Köping, where he settled until the end of his days.
Unlike many contemporaries, Scheele didn’t waste time on philosophical theories and generalizations. His element remained practical experience – careful, methodical, with impeccable accuracy of observations. And his achievements were truly astonishing. Oxygen? Scheele isolated it two years before the famous Joseph Priestley. Chlorine, manganese, barium, molybdenum? All of them came to light in his modest laboratory. Glycerin, hydrogen cyanide? Also fruits of his research.
Some studies had quite significant practical consequences. The scientist developed a method for mass production of phosphorus from animal bones, which turned Sweden into a world leader in match production.
Among all his discoveries, there is one that connects this 18th-century figure with our era of instant selfies and digital images. In 1777, Scheele became interested in the unusual property of silver chloride. In his treatise “On Air and Fire,” he recorded how this compound darkens when exposed to sunlight, transforming into a substance resembling metallic silver.
Modern science confirms that he observed a genuine photochemical reaction – the cornerstone of future photography. Scheele even noted that the process proceeds more intensely in bright light – a fundamental principle of exposure. He didn’t contemplate creating images, but laid the foundation upon which the works of Thomas Wedgwood, Humphry Davy, and John Herschel would later appear.
Despite all the brilliance of his intellect, Scheele remained a remarkably unpretentious person. When in 1775 the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences elected him as a full member – an unprecedented case for a specialist without a higher education diploma – he accepted it with gratitude, but without excessive excitement. And he even declined the invitation from the Prussian monarch Frederick II to head the chemistry department in Berlin. His calling was in research work, among flasks and retorts, not in the halls of scientific assemblies.
Scheele died young – at 43, on May 21, 1786. In all likelihood, the cause was long-term and constant contact with toxic compounds. The concept of safety techniques was more than vague in those times. The invention of photography would come just over half a century later.