Michael Sendivogius

Michael Sendivogius (; ; 2 February 1566 – 1636) was a Polish alchemist, philosopher, and physician. A pioneer of chemistry, he developed ways of purifying and creating various acids, metals, and other chemicals.

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). This substance, the "central nitre", had a central position in Sendivogius' schema of the universe. Provided by Wikipedia