Michael Sendivogius

Michael Sendivogius (1566 to 1636), in Polish Michał Sędziwój, was a Polish alchemist, philosopher and physician, a pioneer of chemistry who developed ways of purifying and creating acids, metals and other chemicals. He discovered that air is not a single substance but contains a life-giving substance, later called oxygen, about 170 years before Scheele, and he correctly identified it with the gas given off by heating saltpetre. Born into a noble family of the Clan of Ostoja, he was sent by his father to the University of Kraków and later studied or travelled at Vienna, Altdorf, Leipzig and Cambridge. He knew John Dee and Edward Kelley, and thanks to him King Stephen Báthory agreed to finance their experiments. He was active at the court of Rudolf II in Prague in the 1590s, and around 1600 he appeared at the court of Sigismund III Vasa, who himself enjoyed alchemy and experimented with him.