Wollaston , William Hyde , 1766-1828 , physiologist, chemist, and physicist

William Hyde Wollaston: born at East Dereham, Norfolk, 1766; third son of the author Francis Wollaston and his wife, Althea Hyde; educated at a private school at Lewisham for two years and then at Charterhouse, 1774-1778; a pensioner of Caius College Cambridge, 1782; scholar of Caius College Cambridge, 1782-1787; appointed a senior fellow, 1787; retained his fellowship until his death; while at Cambridge, became intimate with John Brinkley and John Pond and studied astronomy with their assistance; graduated MB, 1788; on leaving Cambridge, worked as a physician in Huntingdon, 1789; subsequently went to Bury St Edmund's; became acquainted with the Reverend Henry Hasted, a close friend and lifelong correspondent; MD, 1793; elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793 and admitted, 1794; admitted candidate of the Royal College of Physicians, 1794; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1795; went to London and set up practice at no 18 Cecil Street, Strand, 1797; censor of the Royal College of Physicians, 1798; increasing devotion to various branches of natural science, including physics, chemistry, and botany, led him to retire from medical practice, 1800; looked to support himself by chemical research; took a house, no 14 Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, and set up a laboratory, 1801; innovations relating to platinum including the discovery of palladium and of a process for producing pure platinum and welding it into vessels, c 1804; awarded the Copley medal, 1802; Secretary of the Royal Society, 1804-1816; Fellow of the Geological Society, 1812; suggested in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons the replacement of the various gallons then in use by the 'imperial gallon' (adopted in the Weights and Measures Act of 1824), 1814; served as commissioner of the Royal Society on the Board of Longitude, 1818-1828; a member of the Royal Commission on Weights and Measures that rejected the adoption of the decimal system of weights and measures, 1819; frequently elected a vice-president of the Royal Society; declined a proposal to be nominated president of the Royal Society, but consented to act as president until the election, 1820; elected a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences, 1823; elected to the Royal College of Physicians, 1824; suffered occasional partial blindness in both eyes from 1800; attacked by symptoms said to be signify a fatal brain tumour, 1827; set about dictating papers on his unrecorded work, many of which were published posthumously; transferred £1,000 to the Geological Society (which formed 'the Wollaston Fund' from which the society awards annually the Wollaston medal and the balance of the interest), 1828; transferred £2,000 to the Royal Society to form the `Donation Fund', the interest to be applied in promoting experimental research, 1828; awarded a royal medal by the Royal Society for his work, 1828; elected a member of the Astronomical Society, 1828; died, 1828; his house was afterwards inhabited by his friend Charles Babbage. Publications: fifty-six papers on pathology, physiology, chemistry, optics, mineralogy, crystallography, astronomy, electricity, mechanics, and botany, the majority read before the Royal Society and published in the Philosophical Transactions.