Mistress of the Sciences, Asylum of Liberty: Joseph Priestley, Human Rights, and Science in the Early U.S. Republic

Abstract

In 1794 the exiled chemist Joseph Priestley found asylum in the United States, where science was seen as both an international endeavor that depended upon human rights and a tool that would enhance national development. The arrival of Priestley, the first of many scientific exiles to relocate to the United States, seemed to fulfill Jeremy Belknap’s 1780 description of the United States as “the Mistress of the Sciences, as well as the Asylum of Liberty.” By declaring the United States the best, freest place to practice science, American scientists began to realign scientific internationalism according to U.S. interests and linked the universal ideals of science to the national mission.