Henry Cavendish

By yan49

"Henry Cavendish"

Personal Life

This is one of Henry Cavendish's only portraits which was only estimated when drawn

Early Life

Henry Cavendish was born in Nice, France on October 10 ,1731. His father was Lord Charles Cavendish and his mother was Lady Anne Grey who died soon after Henry Cavendish was born. His family lineage traces across eight centuries and is closely connected to many wealthy families of Great Britain. He attended Dr. Newcomb's Hackney Academy in Hackney, England as a child. In 1749, he attended Peterhouse, Cambridge, but he left without a degree after three years. Because he was so shy, there are rumors that he was autistic. He did not socialize with anyone other than his close scientific colleagues.

Adulthood

After he left Cambridge, Henry Cavendish moved back to London to live with his father. He built a laboratory and a workshop there. He moved the laboratory to Clapham Common when his father died in 1783. Henry Cavendish never married and was very reserved, so there are not many records of his social life.

Death

Henry Cavendish died in London, England on February 24, 1810. He was known to be one of the wealthiest men in Britain, and he was buried in Derby Cathedral among many of his ancestors.

Scientific Work

Cavendish was a physicist and a chemist who determined the value of the universal constant of gravitation, created great impact on electrical studies, and discovered hydrogen and the composition of water. He was able to calculate the Earth's mass and introduced the concept of voltage.

Although Cavendish did not publish many works of his brilliant findings, his accuracy and precision in his findings are noted very impressive, and he set a new standard of accuracy in analytical chemistry.

"Inflammable Air"

Cavendish did most of his studies with quantitative measurements. Cavendish noticed that when zinc or iron was dropped into an acid, gas would form. He called this gas that would be produced "inflammable air" which turns out to be hydrogen. He was able to recognize this phenomenon when he calculated the densities of different gases. He noticed that when he burned a certain gas, it produced dew which he later found to be water. It was also much less dense than air. The formation of inflammable air was due to the action of dilute acids which are weakened acids on metals. Because he was wealthy, his equipment would have allowed him to measure precisely. Cavendish found that regular air is made up of nitrogen in a 4:1 ratio by volume. He also did studies in measuring heats of fusion and evaporation.

His research on combustion made great contribution because he determined the composition of water (oxygen and hydrogen). This study was reported in an experiment by Joseph Priestley in which an explosion of two gases left moisture on previously dry surfaces. Expanding on this study, Cavendish studied this and got an approximate mathematical figure for its volume composition.

Cavendish also studied products of fermentation. Fermentation is a chemical reaction that divides complex organic compounds into simple molecules. He proved that the gas from fermentation is almost the same as the fixed air from chalk and magnesia which is modern day carbon dioxide.

Electrical Studies

Cavendish compared the electrical conductivities of equivalent solutinos of electrolytes and expressed a version of Ohm's law.

See Also

Further Reading

Cavendish, Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, American Philosophical Society, 1996, 414 pp.

Cavendish: The Experimental Life, Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Bucknell University Press, 1999, 814 pp.

References

http://www.chemistry.mtu.edu/~pcharles/SCIHISTORY/HenryCavendish.html

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Cavendish-Henry.html

http://www.famousscientists.org/henry-cavendish/

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Cavendish.html