Henry cavendish

Henry Cavendish (United Kingdom: /ˈhenɹi ˈkævənˌdɪʃ/; October 10, 1731 in Nice, Kingdom of Sardinia - February 24, 1810 in London, United Kingdom) was a British and French physicist and chemist. As a physicist, he is known for the Cavendish experiment (by which the universal gravitational constant was later determined); and as a chemist, for the discovery of hydrogen and the composition of water.

Part of his subsequent popularity derives from his unique personal character (extremely reserved) and the many anecdotes that mark his biography.

Biography

His life is well documented, thanks to George Wilson's 1851 work entitled The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish.

Early Years

He was the eldest son of members of the English nobility, Lord Charles Cavendish, youngest son of the Duke of Devonshire, and Lady Ann Gray. He was born in 1731 in Nice, then the kingdom of Sardinia, where his mother was for health reasons. His mother died two years later, when his brother Frederick was born.

At the age of 11 he entered the Newcome School in Hackney, entering Peterhouse (Cambridge University) at the age of 18 (1749), where he remained from 1749 to 1753 (although he did not graduate). At that time he stood out for being an applied student, quiet, very shy, reserved and locked in his world. His teachers used to say that he was always "over the moon", although he actually dedicated himself to reasoning and reflecting on various scientific topics.

Adult Life

Until he was forty years old, he lived on a modest income passed to him by his father (whom he was an assistant in his scientific activities), until in 1773 he inherited from his uncle Lord George Cavendish a considerable fortune of 1,200,000 pounds sterling, becoming one of the richest men of his time, to the point that, in the words of the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot, he became "the richest of all the wise, and quite possibly the wisest of all." the rich".

His preferred occupation continued to be scientific research (which he carried out in his own residence on Clapham Common, in south London), combined with his systematic attendance at the weekly sessions of the Royal Society of London, where he presented his discoveries.

He received the Copley Medal in 1766 and became a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society in 1803.

Death

He died in 1810, at a very advanced age by the average for the time, and was buried in the church that later became Derby Cathedral. There are different versions of his death, although they all coincide in pointing out that he died in his house, after telling one of his servants that he was going to die in a few minutes.

After his death he left abundant notes, an extensive library, boxes full of experiments of all kinds (many of them electrical) and a large fortune.

Personality

On a personal level, he was very withdrawn, lonely, misanthropic, misogynistic and eccentric. In an article published in 2001 by British psychiatrist, science writer and writer Oliver Sacks, it is suggested that Cavendish may have had Asperger's Syndrome.

He never married or had children. Except for his immediate family, she was close to almost no one. She only saw Lord George Cavendish, who would be her main heir, for a few minutes a year. His misogyny was such that the servants had express orders to get out of his sight, under threat of dismissal. He communicated with them through written notes.

There is no record that he belonged to the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a group of scientific friends (they called themselves the lunatics) who gave this name to their club because they met on the nights of the Full Moon (apparently so that they could return home late, after the meetings, illuminated by its dim light), although he knew many of its members. Some of the main English experimenters participated in this curious scientific society, such as the chemist Joseph Priestley, a close friend of his, James Watt (inventor of the steam engine), the astronomer William Herschel or Erasmus Darwin. among others.

Her fortune didn't mean much of a change in her lifestyle. His lack of interest in money was proverbial. When one day his banker suggested that he invest some of his money, he replied "If it bothers you so much, I'll take it somewhere else!" Most of his expenses went to scientific material and books. In time, he came to have a remarkable library, which he kept in a separate house. Some days he would open it up to a select group of scientists. He carefully jotted down even the books he took out for himself.

His usual suit, a faded purple, was completely out of date, and his cocked hat was from the previous century. There was a slight insecurity in the way of speaking about her, and she only appeared in public for scientific meetings. Lord Brougham commented that he "probably uttered fewer words in his whole life than any man who has reached the age of eighty, Trappist monks not excepted."

In his article dedicated to Cavendish, Oliver Sacks quotes the biography published by George Wilson in 1851:

He did not love; he did not hate; he had no hope; he was not afraid [...] An intellectual head thinking, a wonderfully sharp pair of eyes observing and a very skillful pair of hands experiencing or registering, is all I see when reading their writings.

Investigations

Cavendish is especially known for his research in the chemistry of water and air, and for calculating the density of the Earth. His scientific work is of admirable precision, accuracy and thoroughness. Due to his lack of public recognition, in the late 19th century Maxwell discovered while reviewing Cavendish's writings that other scientists they had taken credit for most of his discoveries in electricity.

Chemistry

Cavendish stop to produce hydrogen

His most famous work was the discovery of the composition of water. He stated that "water is composed of dephlogisticated air (oxygen) joined to phlogiston (hydrogen)." His initial work dealt with the specific heat of substances. In his first communication to the Royal Society of London, entitled Experiments on Factitious Air (1766) , he gave an account of how he isolated and studied hydrogen, as well as carbon dioxide and other gases. The treatise Factitious Airs (Aire Ficticio)^{[citation needed]} analyzes the composition of air, especially « flammable air" (hydrogen) and "stable air" (carbon dioxide). Lavoisier later found that water molecules are made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

The two memoirs entitled "Experiments on the air" (of 1784 and 1785) expose his great discoveries on the composition of water and on that of nitric acid; the second memory contains the famous observation that led a century later to the discovery of argon.

Density of the earth

Through what is known as the 'Cavendish experiment', which he described in his work Experiences to determine the density of the Earth (1798), he determined that the density of the Earth was 5.45 times greater than the density of water, a calculation very close to the relationship established by modern techniques (5.5268 times).

Cavendish also determined the density of the atmosphere and did important research on electric currents.

He demonstrated experimentally that Newton's law of gravity held equally for any pair of bodies. To do this he used a torsion balance in a famous experiment, known as the Cavendish experiment or torsion balance experiment, in which he determined the density of the Earth. From his experiment, already in the XIX century, the universal constant G was calculated, which was recognized as a of the fundamental constants of nature. Cavendish in his work did not need to calculate this constant for his purpose, however, it is a common anachronism to credit Cavendish with the discovery or first measurement of the value of this constant.

Electricity

He was one of the founders of the modern science of electricity, though much of his work remained ignored for a century. He proposed the law of attraction between electric charges (Coulomb's law) and used the concept of electric potential. The eccentric Cavendish did not have the appropriate instruments for his investigations, so he measured the force of an electric current in a direct way: he submitted to it and calculated its intensity by pain ^{[citation needed]}.

Acknowledgments

• The Cavendish Laboratory and the Cavendish Chair at the University of Cambridge, installed in the Department of Physics and founded in 1874, received their name in their honor and were founded after an important donation of money by their heir, William Cavendish.
• The street of Derby where he used to live was renamed to give him his name.
• The moon crater Cavendish bears this name in his honor.
• The asteroid (12727) Cavendish also owes its name to the British physicist.