For the English philosopher, to see William Wollaston.

William Hyde Wollaston , (August 6th 1766 - December 22nd 1828) is a physicist and British chemist .

Biography

He is born with East Dereham in the Norfolk, wire of the astronomer Francis Wollaston (1737-1815) and of his wife Mary Farquie. In 1793 it obtains its doctorate in Médecine of the Université of Cambridge. During its studies it is interested in the Chimie, Cristallographie, Métallurgie and the Physique. In 1800 it leaves medicine to be devoted to chemistry and physics.

Work

Wollaston is more known for its work in chemistry. It becomes easy by developing the first practical method of refinement of the ore of Platine in quantity, and lasting the tests of its method it discovers the palladium (Pd) in 1803 and the Rhodium (Rh) in 1804. In 1809 it shows that the Niobium and the Titane are elements pure rather than compounds.

It carries out important work in electricity. In 1801 one of its experiments shows that the electricity produced by friction is identical in kind to that produced by the Batteries. During its last years it carries out a series of experiment, first steps of the development of the Electrical motor. However a controversy appears when Michael Faraday, which is without any doubt the inventor of the electrical motor, refuses to credit Wollaston with this former work.

He works in the field of the Optique, he is first noticed the dark presence of line in the spectrum of the Sun but without systematically studying them nor to put forth assumptions on their origins. He invents the Camera lucida (1807), a type of Goniomètre (1809) and the Prisme of Wollaston.

In a reading in 1805, One the Force off Percussion , it defends the idea of the screw viva of Gottfried Leibniz, first steps of the concept of Conservation of energy.

It is useful in a royal commission which opposes the adoption of the Metric system and another which creates the imperial Gallon.

Honors

• Member of the Royal Society in 1793, its secretary of 1804 with 1813, he is also briefly his president in 1820.
• Medal Copley in 1802 and royal Medal in 1828,
• a mineral, the Wollastonite bears its name as well as a crater on the the Moon,
• the Médaille Wollaston is the highest honorary distinction of the Geological Society off London.

External bonds

• biography
• Biography of Wollaston and history of discovered palladium and rhodium

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