Henry Cavendish
by Sheila Terry
Title
Henry Cavendish
Artist
Sheila Terry
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), the English physicist and chemist, from an 1862 engraving “Men of Science Living in 1807-8”. Cavendish received a good education, spending four years at Cambridge University. Being wealthy he was then able to devote his reclusive life entirely to scientific pursuits. His work in chemistry was most important; he showed that gases could be weighed, that air is a mixture and that water is not an element. In physics he showed that the Earth's density was 5.5 times that of water and worked on gravitation. He also studied electricity and heat, proposing that heat comes from internal motion of the particles of bodies". Much of his physics was unpublished, unknown until published in the 1870s by James Clerk Maxwell, and thus not as influential as it could have been. The Cavendish Laboratory (established 1871) in Cambridge was named in his honour."
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August 2nd, 2016
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