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known picture of Henry Cavendish in existance. |
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known picture of Henry Cavendish in existance. |
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Henry Cavendish was born in Nice, France,
on October 10, 1731. His mother and father were Lady Anne Gray and Lord
Charles Cavendish. His family can be traced back to many British aristocratic
families. Around age 40, he became the heir of over one million pounds
and spent almost none of it. He lived sparingly in London after touring
with his brother in Europe, even though he was one of the richest men in
England.
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Throughout his life he was known to be
terrified by women and did his best to avoid speaking to them, such as
communicating with his female servants in writing. Though in his picture
Cavendish may seem to be dressed normally in concordance with his time,
the attire he was wearing was actually quite outdated. His faded velvet
coat and three-cornered cocked hat were from the previous century. His
attitude towards life, which he lived in solitude with the exception of
a few scientist friends, somewhat matched him physically.
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He had a squeaky voice that he very rarely
used, perhaps because when he did speak, it was haltingly. Cavendish was
also quite tall and thin. The only thing he did socially was his participation
in an organization called the Royal Society Club. He rarely missed meetings
and was extremely respected by his peers. He died sometime between February
24 and March 10, 1810.
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Cavendish went to Dr. Newcome’s School in Hackney. At age 18 he went to Cambridge University in 1749 and left in 1753 without a degree. Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge was named in his honor. |
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Cavendish performed many scientific investigations,
but published only twenty of them. However, he did write a paper called
Factitious Airs, which appeared 13 years after he left Cambridge. It was
based on the results of the many studies he did on gases. He did an experiment
on the strength of electrical current in which he shocked himself and guessed
the magnitude of the pain the shock caused.
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Inflammable air, now known as hydrogen,
had been studied by others for over a century, but Cavendish is usually
given the credit for discovering it. He played a big role in discovering
the composition of water, which was previously believed to have been a
single element. He found that argon is a part of the composition of air.
Cavendish also found that the atmosphere is composed of 79.167% of what
he called phlogisticated air, which is now known to be two molecules of
Nitrogen and one of Argon), and 20.833% of dephlogisticated air, which
we know to be 2 molecules of oxygen.
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Despite many of his discoveries, he didn’t
publish them and people like Maxwell rediscovered them. Possibly his most
important contributions to physics were finding the value of the gravitational
constant, G, which is 6.672 x 10^-11 N m^2 kg^-2, calculating the mass
of Earth during the years 1796 through 1798, which he found to be 5.976
x 10^24 kg, and finding the density of Earth, which is currently estimated
to be 5.448.
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