Richard Kirwan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Kirwan.

Richard Kirwan (born August 1, 1733 in Cloughballymore , † June 22, 1812 in Dublin ), Esquire of Cregg, was an Irish lawyer and chemist. He was a supporter of the phlogiston theory . The Kirwan family was one of those 14 families that the Tribes of Galway called (Tribes of Galway) and the city and the surrounding countryside in County Galway dominated long time.

Live and act

Richard Kirwan was born in Cloughballymore, County Galway , the second son of Mary (Marty) French of Duras and Cloughballymore (or Clogh) and Martin Kirwan († 1741). Both married on October 30, 1728 and had three other sons, Patrick Kirwan, Andrew Kirwan and Hyacinth Kirwan. He was a descendant of William Ó Ciardhubháin of the founder of The Tribes of Galway, Treibheanna na Gaillimhe , a group of merchant families who dominated the political and economic life of Galway city between the mid-13th and the city's surrender . The family lived at Cregg Castle in Galway after 1652 . He attended the Erasmus Smith School in Galway with his brother . From 1745 to 1754 he stayed at the Université de Poitiers in Poitiers , before joining the Jesuit order of Saint-Omer ( Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais) ) as a novice in 1754 . After his older brother died in a duel in 1755, he returned to Ireland and lived in Menlough Castle. Until 1777 Kirwan stayed mainly in Ireland, but also traveled to England, Germany and again France. He was very interested in chemistry, but first studied law at the University of Poitiers. During his stay in London from 1777 to 1787 he continued his chemistry studies. Here Kirwan met important scientists such as Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and other people, such as Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

Richard Kirwan - Portrait of Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808)

Kirwan married Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Blake of Menlo († 1642), in County Galway in 1757, but his wife died eight years later. The couple had two daughters, Maria Theresia Kirwan and Eliza Kirwan. The day after his marriage he was arrested as a debtor - for his wife's debts - debtor's prison .

His experiments on specific gravity and the attractive forces of various salty substances made a significant contribution to the methods of analytical chemistry , and in 1782 he won the Copley Medal of the Royal Society , in 1780 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1784 he led a controversy with Cavendish over his experiments on the air. In 1787 he moved to Dublin, where he was elected President of the Royal Irish Academy four years later . Kirwan held this office as President of the Royal Irish Academy from 1799 to 1812 . In 1789 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1783 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and in 1786 of the American Philosophical Society . In 1796 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1808 a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences in Paris.

In his geological conceptions of the "origin of the world" and its development, he was a proponent of the theories of James Hutton . His works on this topic were Elements of Mineralogy (1784), one of the first systematic works on this topic in English, a consideration of the An Estimate of the Temperature of Different Latitudes (1787) and Essay of the Analysis of Mineral Waters (1799) and Geological Essays (1799) were other geological works.

Some of his works were translated into German by Lorenz von Crell . Marie Lavoisier translated his Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids (1787) from English into French, thereby allowing her husband, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier , to critically examine Kirwan's ideas.

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Richard Kirwan  - Sources and full texts
  • IrishChristian Biography in English (Online)
  • Image of the title page of Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids. (1787) (GIF)
  • Detailed biography in English with pictures (online)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Genealogy of the Kirwans
  2. ^ Front of the Cregg Castle
  3. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: Biography
  4. ↑ Kirwan, Richard. In: askaboutireland.ie. Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government et al., Accessed on November 23, 2017 .
  5. ↑ European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences: Biography ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.euchems.eu
  6. ^ Library Ireland: Biography
  7. ^ Taylor, Georgette: Tracing Influence in Small Steps: Richard Kirwan's Quantified Affinity Theory. Ambix, vol. 55 no. 3, November 2008, 209–231 (PDF; 154 kB) ( Memento of the original dated December 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / georgettetaylor.com
  8. ^ Member History: Richard Kirwan. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 25, 2018 .
  9. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 27, 2019 .
  10. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter K. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 5, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Kirwan, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH Cloughballymore
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1812
Place of death Dublin