Joseph Black

Joseph Black (1728-1799), was a Scottish chemist and physicist, known for the concepts of latent heat and specific heat, and for the discovery of carbon dioxide. He was a founder of thermochemistry, and was the mentor of James Watt. Black was a member of the Poker Club and friend of David Hume, Adam Smith, James Hutton and other leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Life

Joseph Black was born on 16 April 1728 at Bordeaux, one of fifteen children. His father was John Black, a native of Belfast but of Scottish descent who was a wine merchant; his mother, Margaret, was from Aberdeenshire. At the age of twelve, he was sent to a grammar school in Belfast to learn Latin and Greek. In 1744 he enrolled at Glasgow University to study arts, subsequently changing, to study medicine. There, William Cullen was his instructor in chemistry, and the relation between the two soon became that of professor and assistant rather than of master and pupil.

Glasgow years

One of the scientific questions of the day was the action of lithontriptic medicines, especially lime-water. At that time, the caustic nature of alkalines was explained by the supposed presence in them of the principle of fire, "phlogiston"; quicklime, for instance, was chalk which had taken up phlogiston, and when mild alkalis such as sodium carbonate were causticized by its aid, the phlogiston was supposed to pass from it to them. Black showed that, on the contrary, causticization involved the loss of something, as proved by loss of weight; and this something he found to be an "air," which, because it was 'fixed' in the substance before it was causticized, he spoke of as "fixed air" (named carbonic acid by Lavoisier in 1781, - fixed air is what we now know of as carbon dioxide). He showed that when magnesium carbonate (magnesia alba) was heated it lost weight because of the escape of this fixed air, but the weight was regained when the product was made to reabsorb the fixed air. One of his experiments involved placing a mouse into the fixed air; when it died, Black concluded that the fixed air was not breathable.

These investigations were described in the thesis De humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba, which he presented for his doctor's degree in 1754; and a fuller account of them was published in 1756 as "Experiments upon magnesia, quicklime and some other alkaline substances". Black left to others the detailed study of this "fixed air" he had discovered.

In about 1750, 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 was much more accurate than any other balance of the time, and became an important instrument in most chemistry laboratories.

In 1756, Black succeeded Cullen as lecturer in chemistry at Glasgow, and was also appointed Professor of Anatomy and Botanny, but exchanged that post in 1757 for the position of Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine as he didn't feel competent to teach either anatomy or botany. The preparation of lectures thus took up much of his time, and he was also gaining an extensive practice as a physician. Moreover, his attention was engaged on the studies which led to his doctrine of latent heat. He noticed that when ice melts it takes up heat without undergoing any change of temperature, and he argued that this heat, which as was usual in his time he looked upon as a subtle fluid, must have combined with the ice and thus become latent in its substance. This hypothesis he verified by experiments at the end of 1761.

In 1764, with the aid of his assistant, William Irvine (1743-1787), he measured the latent heat of steam, though not very accurately. This doctrine of latent heat he taught in his lectures from 1761 onwards, and in April 1762 he described his work to a literary society in Glasgow. He also noticed that different bodies in equal masses require different amounts of heat to raise them to the same temperature, and so founded the doctrine of specific heats.

Edinburgh years

In 1766 he succeeded Cullen in the chair of chemistry in University of Edinburgh, where he devoted most of his time to preparing lectures. Many manuscript versions of his lectureswere made by students and by professional copyists, and several of these survive. During his time at Edinburgh he taught chemistry to about 5,000 students and thus was uniquely influentia in the dissemination of chemical knowledge during the 18th century.

"I have had the good fortune to teach Chemistry here with applause and last winter was honoured with the regular attendance of four Professors at my lectures. Dr Robertson [Principal of the University of Edinburgh] who misses no opportunity of improving the Medical College at Edinburgh has for several years past been striving to bring me into it and in some hard struggles which he and Dr Cullen had to keep out other Candidates he often did me the honour to declare that he did not act from friendship or attachment to any person but solely to promote the Prosperity of the College".

In 1795 Black's health, never robust, was declining sharply, and he negotiated the appointment of a former student, Thomas Charles Hope, as conjoint Professor of Chemistry. The session 1796-7 was the last in which Black lectured, and the University of Edinburgh Library holds a manuscript copy of notes from these lectures. He died in Edinburgh on the 6th of December, 1799 at the age of 71, and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

"As a scientific investigator, Black was conspicuous for the carefulness of his work and his caution in drawing conclusions. Holding that chemistry had not attained the rank of a science - his lectures dealt with the "effects of heat and mixture" - he had an almost morbid horror of hasty generalization or of anything that had the pretensions of a fully fledged system. This mental attitude, combined with a certain lack of initiative and the weakness of his health, probably prevented him from doing full justice to his splendid powers of experimental research." from Encyclopedia Brittanica 11th edition

Apart from the work already mentioned he published only two papers during his life-time - "The supposed effect of boiling on water, in disposing it to freeze more readily" (Phil. Trans., 1775), and "An analysis of the waters of the hot springs in Iceland" (Trans. Roy. Soc. Ed., 1794).

After his death his lectures were written out from his own notes, supplemented by those of some of his pupils, and published with a biographical preface by his friend and colleague, Professor John Robison (1739-1805), in 1803, as Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry.