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The discovery of oxygen came about from an experiment done by English scientist Joseph Priestley where a mysterious gas was emitted. The presence of this gas was identified, confirmed, and labeled as "emitted oxygen" by French scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier in 1774.
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John Dalton, seeing how oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon combined in definite and constant proportions, led him to hypothesizing that elements must be made up of smaller individual pieces of matter with relative and distinctive weights; these he called atoms. From his work and research towards atoms he developed the "Atomic Theory" which is a system that defined a relationship between atoms and elements.
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This discovery began with equal volumes of gas sometimes yielding twice the amount of gas that french chemist Joseph Gelousk had predicted. These experiments were conducted by Joseph to study John Dalton's atomic theory. The thought provoking results were later explained by Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro with his insight on how gases were made up of multiple atoms; and not just one like previously thought.
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The significance of this synthesis was that Frederick Bower discovered that Urea could be synthesized from organic and inorganic compounds alike; ending the misconception that organic and inorganic substances never crossed in terms of their components.
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This discovery was confirmed with the first ever spectroscope.
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Amatuer chemist John Hiet created the first plastic essentially from the cellulose molecules in plants.
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Russian chemist Demitri Mandeleav organized the known elements into a grid of rows and columns where every element was related to the one next to it or above and below them in one way or another in terms of physical and chemical properties.
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English chemist Humphrey Davey discovered that electricity coulf be used to determine the presence of certain elements in compounds with unknown elements.
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German chemist August Kekule developed a system to visualize the structure of various molecules.
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Joseph Thomson discovered the electron through an experiment he conducted to measure the ratio of the electric charge's mass in an atom.
