Nature: William Hyde Wollaston
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William Hyde Wollaston
William Hyde Wollaston was an English chemist and physicist who is famous for discovering the chemical elements palladium and rhodium. He also developed a way to process platinum ore into malleable ingots, patented the camera lucida, and made contributions in electricity and spectroscopy.
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science · English chemist and physicist (1766–1828) · chemist · physicist · engineer · metallurgist · astronomer · physician · also William Hyde Wollaston, Wollaston
Born 6 August 1766 · Died 22 December 1828 · Q312975
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2025· 1 entry
1828· 4 entries
Died 1828-12-22.
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Won Royal Medal (1828).
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Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1828).
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And dictated it to Henry Warburton who read it on 20 November
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1822· 1 entry
Was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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1820· 1 entry
Career landmark: President of the Royal Society (1820–1820).
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1814· 2 entries
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
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Wollaston was part of a royal commission that recommended adoption of the imperial gallon, and in the same year he coined the name bicarbonate
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1812· 1 entry
Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1812).
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1809· 1 entry
Won Croonian Medal and Lecture (1809).
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1805· 2 entries
Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1805).
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On the Force of Percussion, to defend Gottfried Leibniz's principle of vis viva, an early formulation of the conservation of energy
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1802· 4 entries
Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1802).
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Won Copley Medal (1802).
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12 years before von Fraunhofer's observation
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Wollaston declared the new element identical with niobium (then known as columbium)
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1801· 1 entry
Performed an experiment showing that the electricity from friction was identical to that produced by voltaic piles
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1800· 2 entries
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
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After he had received a large sum of money from one of his older brothers, he left medicine
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1766· 1 entry
Born 1766-08-06.
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