Michael Sendivogius

Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636) was a Polish alchemist, philosopher and physician, born into a Polish noble family and educated at Kraków and several universities abroad.

In the 1590s he worked at Emperor Rudolf II's court in Prague, and around 1600 he entered the service of King Sigismund III Vasa, who experimented with him at Wawel Castle.

A chemistry pioneer, he devised ways of purifying acids and metals and wrote the influential treatise The New Chemical Light. He held that air contained a life-giving substance, identifying it with a gas released by heating saltpetre, and died in obscurity in 1636.