Pure intelligence : the life of William Hyde Wollaston /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Usselman, Melvyn C., author.
Imprint:Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2015].
©2015
Description:1 online resource (xv, 413 pages) : illustrations
Language:English
Series:Synthesis
Synthesis (University of Chicago. Press)
Subject:Wollaston, William Hyde, -- 1766-1828.
Wollaston, William Hyde, -- 1766-1828.
Scientists -- England -- Biography.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Science & Technology.
SCIENCE -- History.
Scientists.
England.
Electronic books.
Biographies.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11242549
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780226245874
022624587X
9780226245737
022624573X
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-405) and index.
Description based on print version record.
Summary:William Hyde Wollaston made an astonishing number of discoveries in an astonishingly varied number of fields: platinum metallurgy, the existence of ultraviolet radiation, the chemical elements palladium and rhodium, the amino acid cystine, and the physiology of binocular vision, among others. Along with his colleagues Humphry Davy and Thomas Young, he was widely recognized during his life as one of Britain's leading scientific practitioners in the first part of the nineteenth century, and the deaths of all three within a six-month span, between 1828 and 1829, were seen by many as the end of a glorious period of British scientific supremacy. Unlike Davy and Young, however, Wollaston was not the subject of a contemporary biography, and his many impressive achievements have fallen into obscurity as a result. Pure Intelligence is the first book-length study of Wollaston, his science, and the environment in which he thrived. Drawing on previously-unstudied laboratory records as well as historical reconstructions of chemical experiments and discoveries, and written in a highly accessible style, Pure Intelligence will help to reinstate Wollaston in the history of science, and the pantheon of its great innovators.
Other form:Print version: Usselman, Melvyn C. Pure intelligence 9780226245737