Active Oxygen in Chemistry

Abstract

Oxygen, the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust (approximately 49.5% by weight), is believed to have been discovered first around 1774, by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish pharmacist, who observed that heating silver carbonate produced a gas which would support respiration. Publication of Scheele’s manuscript on this discovery was delayed, however (Scheele, 1777), allowing Joseph Priestley, an English clergyman who made similar observations upon heating mercuric oxide, to publish his findings first (Priestley, 1776). Regardless of the true chronology of the discovery of this element, it was not until 1787 that it was given the name “oxygen”, meaning acid-former, by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, who believed at the time that all acids contained oxygen (Jaffe, 1949). Since those early studies, a wealth of information on the chemistry and biochemistry of oxygen has been discovered. It is now known that oxygen can form compounds with all of the elements except helium, neon, argon, and probably krypton. Oxygen, in the form of dioxygen, is widely used in industry in the production of steel and other metals, the manufacture of chemicals, rocket propulsion, and the production of stone- and glass-containing products (Francis, 1992).