CAVENDISH, HENRY

born Oct. 10, 1731, Nice, France died Feb. 24, 1810, London, Eng. English physicist and chemist who conducted experiments in diverse fields, discovering such phenomena as the composition of air, the nature and properties of hydrogen, the specific heat of certain substances, the composition of water, and various properties of electricity. He also measured the density and mass of the Earth by a method now known as the Cavendish experiment. Additional reading A Life by George Wilson was published in 1851 (reprinted 1975). The previously unpublished Electrical Researches, edited and partially repeated by J.C. Maxwell, came out in 1879 (reprinted 1967). In 1921, a two-volume edition of previously published papers, together with some of the unpublished experiments, appeared as The Scientific Papers of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.R.S.; vol. 1 (rev. by Sir Joseph Larmor), contains the electrical researches, and vol. 2 (ed. by Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe, with additions by Charles Chree and others), the chemical and dynamical work. A more recent biography is A.J. Berry, Henry Cavendish: His Life and Scientific Work (1960).Among articles dealing with specific aspects of the work of Cavendish are: C. Susskind, Henry Cavendish, Electrician, J. Franklin Inst., 249:181188 (1950), which emphasizes his contributions to electrical theory; and R. McCormmach's concise biographical account in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 3 (1971), which also contains an extensive bibliography of original and secondary works.