Henry Cavendish: The Physicist Who Weighed the Earth and Discovered Hydrogen

On October tenth, seventeen thirty-one, Henry Cavendish was born in Nice, France, into a British aristocratic family. He was a physicist and chemist, and his academic field was experimental physics and chemistry, with a particular focus on gases and fundamental forces.

Cavendish was an exceptionally sharp and methodical experimenter, but also a notoriously shy and introverted person. His two greatest contributions to science are, however, of fundamental importance. In chemistry, he was the first to recognize hydrogen as a distinct element, which he called "inflammable air," and he calculated its mass with admirable accuracy. In physics, in seventeen ninety-seven, he conducted what is now known as the Cavendish experiment. Using a torsion balance, he measured the weak gravitational attraction between lead spheres. Through this, he could for the first time calculate the mass and density of the Earth with great precision – he weighed the Earth. This groundbreaking experiment also laid the foundation for later determining the gravitational constant. Much of Cavendish's pioneering work in electricity was unfortunately not published during his lifetime but was rediscovered much later.