The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish Quotes
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“Phlogiston theory”
“History of chemistry”
“Scientific Revolution”
“He is more to be wondered at than blamed.”
“Historical View of the Progress of Chemistry by Sir Humphry Davy”
“I have thus had access to many unpublished documents, which are fitted to throw light on Cavendish's merits and his personality...”
“Cavendish... dealt with his discoveries as with his great wealth, and allowed the larger part of them to lie unused in his repositories.”
“Abstracts of [the above] papers are given in the sequel... I refer to them... as showing the prominent position which Cavendish took... as a discoverer in chemistry.”
“Between the years 1767 and 1783, Cavendish did not appear before the public as an author on any subject directly connected with chemistry, but... he continued to prosecute chemical enquiries.”
“He was one of the unthanked benefactors of his race, who was patiently teaching and serving mankind, whilst they were shrinking from his coldness, or mocking his peculiarities.”
“His published papers, accordingly, give but an imperfect notion of the great extent of ground over which he travelled in the course of his investigations, and of the success with which he explored it.”
“Cavendish is... the discoverer of the constant composition of the atmosphere, and its first accurate analyst.”
“[H]e could, with the greatest ease, change his subject of study, and that he was in the constant practice of carrying on together, widely dissimilar enquiries.”
“The proceeding quotation contains the account of the first conclusion that was drawn concerning the compound nature of water, and the possibility of producing it out of hydrogen, and the oxygen contained in air.”
“My zeal in Cavendish's cause made no difference in Lord Jeffrey's kindly dealings towards me, and he was the first in whose hands I purposed to place this volume, in which many of his conclusions are called in question.”
“Cavendish... unhesitatingly concluded, that in the circumstances described, "almost all the inflammable air, and about one-fifth part of the common air, lose their elasticity and are condensed into the dew which lines the glass."”
“[H]is memory has been specially honoured by chemists, among whom Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday, and Thomas Thomson have been foremost.”
“His great merit was to point out that elastic fluids may be obtained from an immense variety of organic and inorganic substances, of which they are as important constituents as the solids or liquids which may be separated from them.”
“Archive.org
• The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish by George Wilson, M.D., F.R.D.E. Lecturer on Chemistry, Edinburgh (1851)”
“[N]o service can be rendered to the cause of truth by affecting to deny that, especially in the early history of the sciences, we find long periods of total stagnation, and the tide even ebbing, when by our calculations it should have overflowed.”