William Hyde Wollaston
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- For the English philosophical writer, see William Wollaston.
William Hyde Wollaston FRS (August 6, 1766 – December 22, 1828) was an English chemist and physicist who is famous for discovering two chemical elements and for developing a way to process platinum ore.
Life
He was born in East Dereham, Norfolk, the son of the priest-astronomer Francis Wollaston (1737-1815) and his wife Mary Farquier. Wollaston's father composed and published a star catalogue based on his own observations. Wollaston was the second son and one of 17 children of the Wollastons. He entered Caius College, Cambridge, and there obtained a Medical Masters in 1787, and a doctorate in Medicine 1793, after which he became a fellow of the college. While still studying, he developed an interest in astronomy, and was friendly with some of the important men in the field in England at that time. He also pursued interests in chemistry, crystallography, metallurgy and physics.
In 1789, he removed to Bury St. Edmunds, where he established a medical practice. He was not satisfied with the level of success he achieved there, and in the hopes of improving his chances for a medical career, he moved to London and applied for a position at St. George's Hospital. Another physician was awarded the post, however, and this dampened his enthusiasm for medicine, which he then abandoned in favor of other purusits.
Wollaston was elcted to membership in the Royal Society of London in 1793. In the late 1790s, he formed a partnership with Smithson Tennant, an acquaintance of many years, to purify platinum metal in a form that could be shaped and used in industry. As platina is a hard metal that reacts with very few other substances, chemists sought after it to form crucibles in which they could conduct their chemical analyses.
In 1801, Wollaston published experiments from which he concluded that electricity produced from a galvanic battery is identical in nature to that produced from friction, except that the two differ in intensity (voltage) and quantity (strength of current).
It is said that the manufacture of this metal earned the two men a handsome profit, and also led them to the discovery of four new metallic elements. Tennant first isolated two of these, osmium and iridium, from a dark powdery residue that failed to dissolve in aqua regia, a solvent formed from nitric and sulfuric acids. Each of the newly discovered metals could be distinguished by its distinct chemical properties.
But after precipitating platinum from its solution in aqua regia by the addition of ammonium chloride, some material remained dissolved. Wollaston examined this material, and, by a careful chemical analysis, demostrated new chemical properties of two of its constituents. One, palladium, he had discovered earlier, naming it after the recently discovered astroid Pallas. The other Rhodium, he named after the red color of one of its salts.
Drawing attention through a formal memoir to the methods by which he discovered palladium would have forced him to reveal some of teh processes by which he purified platinum, upon which his business and that of his partner depended. Wollaston therefore chose to announce his discovery by publishing a circular in the spring of 1803 advertising the sale of the metal, which he called "New Silver," at the shop of a Mr. Foster, in Soho, London. The chemist Richard Chenevix, hearing of this, soon thereafter procured a sample, and after a careful analysis, especially noting the metal's density as half that of platinum, but unwilling to admit that a new element had been discovered, falsely concluded that the metal was an amalgam of mercury and platinum. Wollaston did not formally publish an account of his discovery until 1805<<<on the discovery of Palladium, with observations on other substances found with Platina, read July 4, 1805, phil trans 1805, p 316>>>.
Wollaston was elected to membership in the Royal Society of London in 1793, and became secretary of the society in 1806. He was briefly appointed temporary president in 1820 when the previous president, Sir Joseph Banks died, and was succeeded the same year by Humphrey Davy. He wrote a total of 30 memoirs that were published by the society, and several others that were published elsewhere.
The mineral wollastonite is named after him.
Work
Wollaston is perhaps best known as a chemist. He became wealthy by developing the first physico-chemical method for processing platinum ore in practical quantities, and in the process of testing this method he discovered the elements palladium (symbol Pd) in 1803 and rhodium (symbol Rh) in 1804.
Anders Gustav Ekeberg (1776-1813) discovered tantalum in 1802, however, William Hyde Wollaston declared it was identical with Niobium. Latern Heinrich Rose (1795-1864) proved in 1846 that Niobium and Tantulum were indeed different elements.
He also performed important work in electricity. In 1801, he performed an experiment showing that the electricity from friction was identical to that produced by voltaic piles. During the last years of his life he performed electrical experiments that would pave the way to the eventual design of the electric motor. However, controversy erupted when Michael Faraday, who was undoubtedly the first to construct a working electrical motor, refused to grant Wollaston credit for his earlier work.
His optical work was important as well, where he is remembered for his observations of dark Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum (1802) which eventually led to the discovery of the elements in the Sun. He also invented the camera lucida (1807), the Wollaston prism and the reflecting goniometer(1809). The last of these used the reflection of light from crystals of various substances to measure the angles that the crystal facets make with one another. These measurementss are important since the crystal structure of a mineral is related to its molecular structure.
Wollaston used his Bakerian lecture in 1805, On the Force of Percussion, to defend Gottfried Leibniz's principle of vis viva, an early formulation of the conservation of energy. He was too ill to deliver his final Bakerian in 1828 and dictated it to Henry Warburton who read it on November 20.
He also served on a royal commission that opposed adoption of the metric system (1819), and one that created the imperial gallon.
In 1824, Wollaston began suffering from bouts of blindness, where the left half of an image was blotted out. This may have been the beginning of an illness which took his life in 1829. After his death, he was found to have been afflicted with a brain tumor. He was, however, lucid until he expired.
Honors
- Fellow of the Royal Society, 1793.
- Secretary, 1804-1816.
- President, briefly in 1820.
- Royal Medal, 1828.
Commemoration
- The Wollaston Medal is named for him.
- The chain silicate mineral Wollastonite is named after him.
- Wollaston Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada is named after him.
See also
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
<<We need at least 3 reliable references here, properly formatted.>>
- Thomson, Thomas. 1830. The History of Chemistry. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. 1:247-250.
- Wilson, George. 1862, Religio Chemici: Essays. London: Macmillan and Co. 253-304.
- Drake, Daniel, and Lundsford P. Yandell, eds. 1847. The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery. 7:170-172
http://www.nycominerals.com/pdfs/AR-WWollaston.pdf
External links
- Palladium Discovery History Uses & Investments
- Rhodium and Palladium Events Surrounding Their Discoveries
Credits
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