John Mayow

John Mayow (1641 to 1679) was a chemist, physician and physiologist remembered for early research into respiration and the nature of air, work in what is sometimes called pneumatic chemistry. Proctor concluded after extensive research that he was born in 1641 near Morval in Cornwall, though both the place and the year of his birth have been disputed; he was admitted to Wadham College, Oxford, at seventeen in 1658, became a scholar in 1659 and was elected a fellow of All Souls in 1660. He graduated in law but made medicine his profession and became noted for his practice at Bath. In 1668 he published two tracts at Oxford on respiration and rickets, reprinted in 1674 with three others as Tractatus quinque medico-physici. Accepting from Boyle's experiments that air is necessary for combustion, he showed that fire is supported only by a more active and subtle part of the air, which he called the spiritus igneo-aereus, and he argued that the same particles are consumed in respiration. On the proposal of Robert Hooke he was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society in 1678 and he died in London the following year.