The 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 #246999

When the Council of the Cavendish Society did me the honour to ask me to write the life of the great philosopher with whom the Society had associated itself by its name I willingly undertook the task. During the enforced leisure of a long illness I commenced in 1842 to collect materials for a projected work on the lives of the Chemists of Great Britain in which Cavendish should occupy a prominent place; and I had made some progress in my task when the Cavendish Society was founded. Although an original member of that association, I had no share in determining the selection of the name by which it is distinguished nor was Cavendish an object of greater interest to me than the other great philosophers of our country whose lives I proposed to write. When however, at the call of the Society, I laid aside the more general undertaking in which I was engaged, and turned my attention solely to the works and character of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, circumstances had occurred which gave him an importance in the eyes of the lettered public, such as no other chemist at the time possessed. He prosecuted zealously and successfully so many branches of knowledge, that the students of nearly all the physical sciences may consider him as an illustrious brother; nor have I any wish to assert that Chemistry is entitled to claim him as peculiarly hers.