Michael Sendivogius

Described oxygen 170 years before Lavoisier — and faked transmutations at half the courts of Europe.

In Novum Lumen Chymicum (1604) Sendivogius argued that air contains a "food of life" — a hidden substance, released from saltpeter on heating, that animals and fire both need. This is oxygen, identified correctly in function if not in name, and Lavoisier's notebooks show he read Sendivogius. Simultaneously, Sendivogius made a career of staging public transmutation demonstrations for Rudolf II in Prague and other Habsburg courts, using sleight-of-hand and pre-loaded crucibles. The oxygen insight is one of the great unattributed discoveries in chemistry. The transmutation tour was performance art with funding.