Cavendish, Henry (1731-1810)

Henry Cavendish was one of the greatest of the early English physical scientists. After leaving Peterhouse, Cambridge, without a degree he dedicated the rest of his life to science. From his uncle, he inherited a vast fortune which he used to fund the building of his huge library and his scientific research, much of which was never published. In 1766 he identified hydrogen and studied carbon dioxide, later determining both of their densities relative to air. In 1784 he showed that water was not an element and could be produced by exploding hydrogen and oxygen together. It was an experiment that he later repeated with nitric acid and oxygen. The famous 'Cavendish experiment' (1798) allowed him to estimate accurately the mean density of the Earth and the gravitational constant by using a sensitive torsion balance made by John Michell. His work on electricity was not recognized until it was published by James Clerk Maxwell (1879). It turned out that he had foreseen much of the work of Coulomb, Ohm and Faraday, and had deduced the inverse square law of electrical attraction and repulsion. Throughout his life, he was an eccentric recluse and a noted misogynist he ordered all his female domestic staff to keep out of his sight. The Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, established in 1871, was partly funded from his bequest and was named in his honour.