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June 16, 2005
Joseph Black, discoverer of CO2
In the course of my CO2 offset tree planting reading, I stumbled on the information that carbon dioxide was first identified by the Scottish chemist Joseph Black.
Born in Bordeaux in 1728, where his father was in the wine trade, he eventually became a professor in both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities. His work on ‘fixed air’ (carbon dioxide) dated from 1754. He was buried in Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1799.
There is a good biography on the Edinburgh University website. The wikipedia entry is just a stub, perhaps indicating how few of us know about Joseph Black.
www.chem.ed.ac.uk/welcome/history_black.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Black
Posted by Simon Holledge at June 16, 2005 04:38 PM
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