Henry Cavendish FRS was an English natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed ‘inflammable air’ Cavendish is considered to be one of the so-called pneumatic chemists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with Joseph Priestley, Joseph Black, and Joseph Rutherford.
About Henry Cavendish in brief
Henry Cavendish FRS was an English natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed ‘inflammable air’ Cavendish described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper, On Factitious Airs. Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish’s experiment and gave the element its name. A notoriously shy man, Cavendish was nonetheless distinguished for great accuracy and precision in his researches into the composition of atmospheric air, the properties of different gases, the synthesis of water, the law governing electrical attraction and repulsion, a mechanical theory of heat, and calculations of the density of the Earth. Cavendish is considered to be one of the so-called pneumatic chemists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with, for example, Joseph Priestley, Joseph Black, and Joseph Rutherford. He was also a trustee of the British Museum, to which he devoted a good deal of time and effort. He took virtually no part in politics, but followed his father into science, through his researched and his participation in scientific organisations. He published no books and few papers, but he achieved much. Several areas of research, including mechanics, optics, and magnetism, feature extensively in his manuscripts, but they scarcely feature in his published work. In 1777 he discovered that air exhaled by mammals is not converted to air by their solubility in water or mercury. He also predicted the gravitational attraction of mountains, and for the scientific instructions for Constantine Phipps’s expedition in search of the North Pole and the Northwest Passage.
His first paper, factitious airs, appeared in 1766, and he was elected to the Council of the Royal Society of London in 1760. His interest and expertise in the use of scientific instruments led him to head a committee to review the Royal. Society’s meteorological instruments and to help assess the instruments of theRoyal Greenwich Observatory. He left Cambridge in 1751 without taking a degree and lived with his father in London, where he soon had his own laboratory. He later became a manager at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and took an active interest in Humphry Davy’s chemical experiments. He died in 1777, and is usually given the credit for recognising its elemental nature, which others had prepared earlier, such as Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle had prepared for water, and which he collected along with other gases, including carbon dioxide, mercury and mercury. His son, Lord Charles Cavendish, spent his life firstly in politics and then increasingly in science, especially in the Royal society of London. Henry was styled as ‘The Honourable Henry Cavendish’ and attended Newcome’s School, a private school near London, from the age of 11 until 1773. He then joined his father as an elected trustee of The British Museum. He worked closely with Charles Blagden, an association that helped Blgden enter fully into London’s scientific society.
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