Abstract
Henry Cavendish (Nice, 10 October 1731–London, 28 February 1810), the elder of two sons of Lord Charles Cavendish, the fifth son of the second Duke of Devonshire, was born in Nice, where his mother, the fourth daughter of Henry Duke of Kent, was then living on account of poor health. She died when Henry was only two years of age. He was at first educated in a private school in Hackney, then went in 1749 to Peterhouse College, Cambridge, leaving without a degree (perhaps on religious grounds) early in 1753. It is said that his family wished him to take part in public life. His father was not rich for a nobleman in his position but provided for his son with as much as he could afford. After a tour of the Continent with his brother, Cavendish lived in London with his father until the latter’s death in 1783. His father carried out important research in heat, electricity, and magnetism, and his son assisted him. Much of his chemical and electrical work was done in this period. Thomson1 says that when he lived with his father in Great Marlborough Street, Cavendish’s ‘apartments were a set of stables, fitted up for his accommodation’, but Maxwell2 points out that a room in which Cavendish carried out his early electrical experiments was 14 ft. high. He became F.R.S. in 1760 but his first published paper is in the Philosophical Transactions in 1766. He later became very rich (from the bequest of which of his relatives is not clear), but he retained the frugal habits of his early life.
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Anon., Brit. Quart. Rev., 1845, ii, 197, 243; Anon., Pharm. J., 1894, xxv, 661; Aykroyd, Three Philosophers (Lavoisier, Priestley, Cavendish), London, 1935; J. Barrow, Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Club, 1849, 140 (does not call him ‘Hon.’); A. J. Berry, Henry Cavendish. His Life and Scientific Work, London, i960; Biot, Biographie Universelle, 1844, vii, 272; Brougham, 1855 (or 1872), i, 91–106, 312–16, 327; F. Cajori, History of Physics, New York, 1929, 134; Cuvier, AdS, 1814, xii, II, cxxvi–cxliv (eloge, 1812); id., (1)Recueil des Éloges, 1819, ii, 75 (not very accurate but containing material not found elsewhere); id., (2) Éloges Historiques, i860, 139 (Wilson, 1851, 159, says considerable importance attaches to Cuvier’s statements); Dains, J. Chem. Educ., 1934, xi, 153; H. Davy, Works, 1840, vii, 127–45 (and notes by J. Davy); Getman, Osiris, 1937, iii (1), 69; Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt, (1) B.A. Rep., 1839 (1840), 3–68, and 60 pp. lithographed facsimiles; id., (2) Phil. Mag., 1846, xxviii, 106; Hoefer, (1), ii, 535; id. (anon.), NBG, 1854, ix, 293; Hunt, DNB, 1887, ii, 348; Kopp, (1), i, 230; id., (2), iii, 235–310; J. P. Muirhead, Correspondence of the Late James Watt, London, 1846; Partington, The Composition of Water, 1928, 5, 26, 30; T. Thomson, (1), i, 336; id., Ann. Phil., 1813, i, 5; T. E. Thorpe, (1)Science Lectures delivered in Manchester, Manchester, 1875, vii, 89; id., (2) Essays, 1902, 79; (3) id., in Cavendish, Scientific Papers, Cambridge, 1921, ii, 1 f. (the account of Cavendish’s unpublished chemical work is defective; it does not even reproduce in ordinary type the parts of Cavendish’s diary lithographed by Harcourt, (1), and the reports of the work on arsenic and tartaric acid are very sketchy); Tilden, Famous Chemists, 1921, 41; W. Walker, Memoirs of Distinguished Men of Science, 1862, 38; G. Wilson, (1) Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish, including Abstracts of his more important Scientific Papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged Discoverers of the Composition of Water, 1851 (dated 1849 on binding); Wilson ‘corrected’ the punctuation, parts in italics, etc., of letters or parjs of memoirs, and Harcourt and Muirhead are more reliable in this respect; id., (2) Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1859, iv, 205; T. Young, biogr., repr. in Cavendish, Scientific Papers, 1921, ii, 435.
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H. Maclachlan, English Education under the Test Acts, Manchester, 1931, 203, mentions that Warltire, who ‘has been a lecturer for about 50 years on these subjects’ (natural philosophy), had given a course in 1803 at Rotherham.
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Faraday, Chemical Manipulation, 3 ed., 1842, 275: ‘the only substance of the kind perhaps worth keeping.’
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Muirhead, 18 (Watt’s letter to Black, 21 April 1783); Robison, System of Mechanical Philosophy, Edinburgh, 1822, ii, 5, 35, 160.
Black, Lectures on Chemistry, 1803, i, 524.
Ramsay, Life and Letters of Joseph Black, 1918, 89–90.
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© 1962 J. R. Partington
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Partington, J.R. (1962). Cavendish. In: A History of Chemistry. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00309-9_8
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