Editing William Hyde Wollaston (section)

==Work==
After having established a partnership with [[Smithson Tennant]] in 1800 in order to produce and sell chemical products, Wollaston became wealthy by developing the first physico-chemical method for processing [[platinum]] ore in practical quantities. He held the details of the process secret until near his death and made huge profits for about 20 years by being the only supplier in England of the product which had many of the same qualities as gold, but was much cheaper.<ref name="eb"/>

Chemical analysis related to the process of purifying platinum led Wollaston to discover the elements [[palladium]] (symbol Pd) in 1802 and [[rhodium]] (symbol Rh) in 1804.<ref name="eb"/>

When [[Anders Gustav Ekeberg]] discovered [[tantalum]] in 1802 Wollaston declared the new element identical with [[niobium]] (then known as columbium). Niobium and tantalum bear an unusually close chemical similarity, even among [[Group (periodic table)|vertically adjacent elements]]. [[Heinrich Rose]] would later prove that columbium and tantalum were indeed different elements and he would rename columbium "niobium" in 1846.

The mineral [[wollastonite]] was later named after Wollaston for his contributions to crystallography and mineral analysis.<ref name="eb"/>

Wollaston also performed important work in [[electricity]]. In 1801, he performed an experiment showing that the electricity from [[friction]] was identical to that produced by [[voltaic pile]]s.<ref>From "Telegraphic journal: a weekly record of electrical and scientific progress" (1864, Truscott, Son & Simmons): Dr. Wollaston, in 1801, used ordinary friction electricity to decompose water by means of his guarded poles. ... he was thus able to transmit the power of the electrical machine as a continuous current.</ref> During the last years of his life he performed electrical experiments, which resulted in his accidental discovery of electromagnetic induction 10 years prior to [[Michael Faraday]], preceding the eventual design of the [[electric motor]]: Faraday constructed the first working electric motor and published his results without acknowledging Wollaston's previous work. Wollaston's demonstration of a motor to the Royal Society had failed, however, but nonetheless his prior work was acknowledged by Humphry Davy in the same paper which lauded Faraday's "ingenious" experiments.<ref>{{cite journal|title=On a New Phenomenon of Electro-Magnetism|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=113|pages=153–159|last=Davy|first=H Humphry|year=1823|location=London|doi=10.1098/rstl.1823.0015|s2cid=117591814 |doi-access=}}</ref> Wollaston also invented a battery that allowed the zinc plates in the battery to be raised out of the acid, so that the zinc would not be dissolved as quickly as it would if it were in the battery all the time.

His optical work was important as well, where he is remembered for his observations of dark gaps in the solar spectrum (1802),<ref>William Hyde Wollaston (1802) [http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/92/365.full.pdf+html "A method of examining refractive and dispersive powers, by prismatic reflection,"] ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'', '''92''': 365–380; see especially p. 378.</ref><ref name="OpenStaxAstronomy-5.3">{{Open access}} OpenStax Astronomy, "Spectroscopy in Astronomy". OpenStax CNX. 29 September 2016 http://cnx.org/contents/1f92a120-370a-4547-b14e-a3df3ce6f083@3</ref> a key event in the history of [[spectroscopy]]. He invented the [[camera lucida]] (1807) which contained the [[Wollaston prism]] (the four-sided optics of which were first described basically by [[Johannes Kepler|Kepler]])<ref>{{cite book|page=16|title=The camera lucida in art and science|year=1987|publisher=Taylor & Francis|author1=Hammond, John  |author2=Austin, Jill}}</ref> and the reflecting [[goniometer]] (1809). He also developed the first lens specifically for camera use, called the [[meniscus lens]], in 1812. The lens was designed to improve the image projected by the [[camera obscura]]. By changing the shape of the lens, Wollaston was able to project a flatter image, eliminating much of the distortion that was a problem with many of that day's [[biconvex lens]]es.

Wollaston also devised a [[cryophorus]], "a glass container containing liquid water and water vapor. It is used in physics courses to demonstrate rapid freezing by evaporation."<ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1088/0031-9120/15/5/006|title=Wollaston's cryophosphorus-precursor of the heat pipe|journal=Physics Education|volume=15|issue=5|pages=310–314|year=1980|last1=Smith|first1=B A|bibcode=1980PhyEd..15..310S|s2cid=250739085 }}</ref>  He used his [[Bakerian lecture]] in 1805, ''On the Force of Percussion'', to defend [[Gottfried Leibniz]]'s principle of ''[[vis viva]]'', an early formulation of the [[conservation of energy]].

Wollaston's attempt to demonstrate the presence of [[glucose]] in the blood serum of [[diabetic]]s was unsuccessful due to the limited means of detection available to him. His 1811 paper "On the non-existence of sugar in the blood of persons labouring under diabetes mellitus"<ref>{{cite journal | title = On the non-existence of sugar in the blood of persons labouring under diabetes mellitus | journal = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society | year = 1811 | volume = 101 | pages = 96–105 | doi = 10.1098/rstl.1811.0006 | last1 = Wollaston | first1 = W. H.| doi-access = free }}</ref> concluded that sugar must travel via lymphatic channels from the stomach directly to the kidneys, without entering the bloodstream. Wollaston supported this theory by referring to the thesis of a young medical student at Edinburgh, named [[Charles Darwin (medical student)|Charles Darwin]], titled, "Experiments establishing a criterion between mucaginous and purulent matter. And an account of the retrograde motions of the absorbent vessels of animal bodies in some diseases."<ref>{{cite journal | title = Charles Darwin and the history of the early use of digitalis | journal = Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine | year = 1934 | volume =  10 | issue = 2 | pages = 496–506}}</ref> The medical student was the uncle of the more famous [[Charles Robert Darwin]].

Wollaston prophetically foretold that if once an accurate knowledge were gained of the relative weights of elementary atoms, philosophers would not rest satisfied with the determination of mere numbers, but would have to gain a geometrical conception of how the elementary particles were placed in space. [[Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff]]'s ''La Chimie dans l'Espace'' was the first practical realisation of this prophecy.<ref>[[John Theodore Merz]], ''[[q:A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century|A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century]]'' (1903) Vol. 1</ref>

In 1814 he was the first to estimate the [[atomic weight]] of [[carbon]] to be 12, calculating it from the relative densities of [[oxygen]] and [[carbon dioxide]] by [[Jean-Baptiste Biot]] and [[François Arago]]. However, value of 6 (with an according modification of all chemical formulas to have double the number of C atoms) was more popular well into the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Atomic Weights of Carbon, History |url=http://carbon.atomistry.com/atomic_weight_history.html |access-date=20 September 2024 |website=carbon.atomistry.com}}</ref>

Also in 1814, Wollaston was part of a royal commission that recommended adoption of the [[imperial gallon]], and in the same year he [[Factitious airs#bicarbonate|coined]] the name [[bicarbonate]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wollaston|first=WH|date=January 1814|title=I. A Synoptic scale of chemical equivalents|url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1814.0001|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=104|pages=1–22|doi=10.1098/rstl.1814.0001|s2cid=96774986|url-access=subscription}}</ref> He served on the government's [[Board of Longitude]] between 1818 and 1828<ref name="eb" /> and was part of [[royal commission]] that opposed adoption of the [[metric system]] (1819).<ref>{{cite book|title=The Renaissance of Science: The Story of the Atom and Chemistry|last=Martini|first=Albert|publisher=Maitland|location=Florida|year=2014}}</ref>

Wollaston was too ill to deliver his final Bakerian lecture in 1828 and dictated it to [[Henry Warburton]] who read it on 20 November.