2009-02-16 09:00:00
Henry Cavendish, was a singular scientist, shy among the timid, embarrassing, maniacal, misogynistic and… great. He is as famous for his extravagant way of living as he is for his scientific experiments.
He was born in 1731 in Nice, France, of English parents and died in London in 1810. He studied the way in which substances accumulate or lose heat (specific heat). He discovered the properties of hydrogen and demonstrated the composition of water, an experiment the results of which he announced in the manner of those times”water is composed of dephlogisticated air (oxygen) bound to phlogiston (hydrogen)“. He measured the density of the atmosphere and made important contributions on electricity.
His most famous experiment consisted in demonstrating that masses, no matter what their composition or shape, are attracted to each other. He did it with a wonderful experiment that has become one of the most emblematic in the history of science, to the point that it bears his name: the Cavendish Experiment. Using a torsion balance he determined the average density of the Earth with minimal error, put another way, weighed the earth.
The biography that we offer you today begins like this:
It was seven o’clock on the morning of February 17, 1810 and as every day for more than fifty years, a frail and stooped old man took his morning walk through the lonely streets of London. He walked with his head down, his chin tucked in, his gaze fixed on the ground. A fleeting gesture that he had adopted to cover his sickly shyness and his unspoken antipathy for mankind. He didn’t feel the slightest interest in his peers but, on the other hand, it was impossible to walk past him and not notice him…
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