Joseph Black was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide.
23 Facts About Joseph Black
2.
Joseph Black was Professor of Anatomy and Chemistry at the University of Glasgow for 10 years from 1756, and then Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1766, teaching and lecturing there for more than 30 years.
3.
Joseph Black's mother was from an Aberdeenshire family that had connections with the wine business and his father was from Belfast, Ireland, and worked as a factor in the wine trade.
4.
Joseph Black added the principle of Air when his experiments showed the presence of carbon dioxide, which he called fixed air, thus contributing to pneumatic chemistry.
5.
Joseph Black's research was guided by questions relating to how the principles combined with each other in various different forms and mixtures.
6.
Joseph Black used the term affinity to describe the force that held such combinations together.
7.
In 1757, Joseph Black was appointed Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine at the University of Glasgow.
8.
Joseph Black showed that different substances have different specific heats.
9.
Joseph Black provided significant financing and other support for Watt's early research in steam power.
10.
Joseph Black explored the properties of a gas produced in various reactions.
11.
Joseph Black found that when bubbled through an aqueous solution of lime, it would precipitate calcium carbonate.
12.
Joseph Black used this phenomenon to illustrate that carbon dioxide is produced by animal respiration and microbial fermentation.
13.
In 1766, treading in the footsteps of his friend and former teacher at the University of Glasgow, Joseph Black succeeded William Cullen as Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh.
14.
Joseph Black's lectures had a powerful effect in popularising chemistry and attendance at them even came to be a fashionable amusement.
15.
Joseph Black was widely recognised as one of the most popular lecturers at the University.
16.
Joseph Black's students came from across the United Kingdom, its colonies and Europe, and hundreds of them preserved his lectures in their notebooks and disseminated his ideas after they left university.
17.
Joseph Black became one of the principal ornaments of the University; and his lectures were attended by an audience which continued increasing from year to year, for more than thirty years.
18.
Joseph Black's discourse was so plain and perspicuous, his illustration by experiment so apposite, that his sentiments on any subject never could be mistaken even by the most illiterate; and his instructions were so clear of all hypothesis or conjecture, that the hearer rested on his conclusions with a confidence scarcely exceeded in matters of his own experience.
19.
Joseph Black was a member of the revision committee for the editions of the college's Pharmacopoeia Edinburgensis of 1774,1783, and 1794.
20.
Joseph Black was appointed principal physician to King George III in Scotland.
21.
Joseph Black was 1st cousin, great friend and colleague to Adam Ferguson FRSE who married his niece Katherine Burnett in 1767, and associated with David Hume, Adam Smith, and the literati of the Scottish Enlightenment.
22.
Joseph Black died peacefully at his home 12 Nicolson Street in south Edinburgh in 1799 at the age of 71 and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
23.
In 2011, scientific equipment believed to belong to Joseph Black was discovered during an archaeological dig at the University of Edinburgh.