Joseph Black

Early years

Black was born in Bordeaux, France, where his father, who was from Belfast, Ireland, was engaged in the wine trade. His mother was from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and her family was also in the wine business. Joseph had twelve brothers and sisters.^[1] He entered the University of Glasgow when he was eighteen years old, and four years later he went to Edinburgh to further his medical studies.

Professional life

While at the University of Edinburgh, Black studied properties of phlogiston.

In about 1750, Joseph Black developed the analytical balance based on a light-weight beam balanced on a wedge-shaped fulcrum. Each arm carried a pan on which the sample or standard weights was placed. It far exceeded the accuracy of any other balance of the time and became an important scientific instrument in most chemistry laboratories.^[3].

In 1757, he was appointed Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

In 1761, he discovered that when latent. This discovery was perhaps his most important, and the one on which his scientific fame chiefly rests. He also showed that different substances have different specific heats.

Personal life

Black was a friend of James Watt, who first began his studies on steam power at Glasgow University in 1761. Black also was a member of the Poker Club and associated with David Hume, Adam Smith, and the literati of the Scottish Enlightenment. Black never married. He died in Edinburgh at the age of 71, and is buried there in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

References

1. ^ Lenard, p. 129
2. ^ See [1]
3. ^ See [2]

Further reading

• Lenard, Philipp (1950). Great Men of Science. Translated from the second German edition, London: G. Bell and Sons, ISBN 0-8369-1614-X, pp. 126 ff.

• Ramsay, William (1905). The Gases of the Atmosphere, London: Macmillan.