John Mayow

Magnus, Albertus, 14 Marsden, Ernest, 39 Maxwell, James Clerk, 103 Mayow, John, 19 Mendeleev, Dmitri, 63, 64, 65 Meyer, Julius Lothar, 63 MUlikan, Robert Andrew, 37 MitscherUch, Edhardt, 205 Molina, Mario, 265, 266 Morehead, James T, 304 Morton, WiUiam T. I, 209 Moseley, Henry, 64 MuUer, Paul, 282, 283 MuUis, Kary B., 236... 

Mayow, John (1643-1679) English chemist, physician, and physiologist who is remembered today for conducting early research into respiration and the nature of air. 

Mayer (von) Julius Robert (1814—1878) Ger. phys., determined quantitatively equivalence of heat and work, studied principle of conservation laws even extended to living and cosmic phenomena Mayow John (1641-1679) Brit, chem., studied similarity between chem. process of combustion and physiological function... 

Bohm, Walter. John Mayow and his contemporaries. Ambix 11. 

Guerlac, Henry. John Mayow and the aerial nitre. CIHS 7 332-349. 

Guerlac, Henry. The poets aerial nitre studies in the chemistry of John Mayow,... 

John Mayow [1640-1679], fhttp // www.crvstalinks.com/mavow.html]. 

In 1717 Louis Lemery stated that saltpeter was usually obtained from tile earth and refuse piles near old lime-plastered walls and in stables and churchyards. To explain its origin, John Mayow postulated the existence of a hypothetical saltpeter m the atmosphere. When Mariotte exposed to the air of an upper room some saltpeter earth (earth from which all the saltpeter had previously been leached out), however, he was unable to prepare even a gram of saltpeter. When he placed the same earth in the cellar, it soon became covered with salt-petei. Lemery placed three earthen vessels containing respectively lime, potassium carbonate, and leached saltpeter earth on pedestals, and exposed them to the moist air of a dark cellar whose walls and floor were covered widi saltpeter. Even after two years, however, he found not a trace of saltpeter in any of the three vessels. By frequently moistening the contents with animal substances, however, he soon prepared a considerable quantity of it (42). 

John Mayow, 1641-1679, English chemist and physician, who died quite young. Famous for his early researches on combustion and respiration His theory of combustion was described in his tract entitled "De Sale Nitro et Spirito Nitro-aereo in 1674 ( 48). 

Since Max Speter (27,41) mentioned that John Mayow in his Trac-tatus Quinque anticipated Lavoisier (28) in die belief that all acids contain oxygen, it is interesting to know that Dr. Rudierford also made the same error. A note by John Robison in his edition of Black s Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry reads as follows ... 

Speteh, Max, John Mayow und das Schiclcsal seiner Lehren, Chem.-Ztg.,... 

Birth of Dr. John Mayow in London. Author of an early theory of combustion. 

The latter half of the seventeenth century is marked by the activity of a considerable number of able investigators and writers on chemistry, notable among whom are Nicolas Le Febre (or Le Febure), ( -1674) Christopher Glaser (died about 1670-1673) Eobert Boyle (1627-1691) Thomas Willis (1621-1675) Johann Kunkel (1630-1702) Johann J. Becher (1635-1682) John Mayow (1645-1679) Nicolas Lemery (1645-1715) and Wilhelm Homberg (1652-1715). All these men contributed to the increase of knowledge of the facts of chemistry by their researches and publications, which appeared from about 1660 to the close of the century. 

By the end of the talk, the room was so smoky that several ladies had to be escorted out. Wepfer said that there was time for only three questions. My hand shot up, and he turned to me with amusement. I wonder if you are familiar with John Mayow and his conclusions about fire and air I asked. His smile faded, but he nodded gravely. Then you ll know that Mayow noticed that if a mouse was placed under a glass, it could not live after part of the air—the part he called the nitro-aerial spirit—had been consumed, even though some air was left in the glass. Likewise with a candle flame. How does Mayow s theory that air in fact consists of at least two different parts fit your theory of the Archaeus, which you say is a force separate from the air ... 

Bohn, De Ignis, paragraphs 19-21. On Mayow s aerial-niter, see Henry Guerlac, John Mayow and the Aerial Nitres Studies in the Chemistry of John Mayow -1, 332-49 in A clcs du Septieme Congres International d Histoire des Sciences (Jerusalem, 1953) Robert G. Frank, Jr., Haney and the Oxford Physiologists A Study of Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction (Berkeley, CA University of California Press, 1980), 224-74. 

John Mayow and Thomas Beddoes, Extracts from Tractatus quinque medico-physici... Studio Johannis Mayow Oxford, 1674, trans. anded. by Thomas Beddoes (Oxford and London, 1790) The Chemical Essays of Charles- William Scheele. Translatedfrom the Transactions of the Academy of Science at Stockholm, with additions by T. Beddoes London, 1786). 

Not until the seventeenth century was doubt cast on the notion that air was one of the basic elements. A Dutch physician and naturalist, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), was the first to suspect that there is some lifesupporting ingredient in the air that is the key to breathing and combustion. The chemists will find out what it actually is, how it functions, and what it does it is still in the dark, Boerhaave wrote in 1732. Happy he who will discover it. 3 In England, the brilliant scientist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) also maintained that some life-giving substance, probably related to those needed for maintaining a flame, was part of the air. The English physician and naturalist John Mayow (1645-1679) claimed that nitro-aerial corpuscles 4 were responsible for combustion. 

Partington, James Riddick. The Life and Work of John Mayow. Isis 47, 217-230 405-417 (1956). 

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