Lessons from Henry Cavendish

The remarkable story of a truly great scientist

The great British scientist Henry Cavendish has a lot to teach us about achieving professional excellence through complete dedication and commitment to the task at hand.

Born into a rich family, Cavendish was the most gifted English scientist of his age, but suffered from shyness to a ‘degree bordering on disease’. Any human contact was for him a source of the deepest discomfort.

Once he opened his door to find an Austrian admirer standing outside. Words of praise flew out of the excited Austrian. For a few moments Cavendish listened to the visitor. Then, unable to take any more, he ran out of his house. It was some hours before he would be coaxed back to his home.

Although Cavendish did sometimes attend social events, the other guests were clearly informed that he was on no account to be approached or even looked at. Those who sought his views were advised to wander into his vicinity as if by accident and to ‘talk as it were into vacancy’. If these remarks were scientifically worthy they might receive a mumbled reply, but more often than not they would hear a peeved squeak and turn to find the place was actually vacant. Cavendish would be seen retreating towards a more peaceful corner!

In the course of a long life, Cavendish made a series of important discoveries. He was the first person to isolate hydrogen and the first to combine hydrogen and oxygen to form water. His experiments with electrical conductivity were a century ahead of their time, but unfortunately remained undiscovered until that century had passed.

Without telling anyone, Cavendish discovered or anticipated the law of the conservation of energy, Ohm’s Law, Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures, Richter’s Law of Reciprocal Proportions, Charles’s Law of Gases, and the principles of electrical conductivity. He also foreshadowed the work of Kelvin and G H Darwin on the effect of tidal friction on slowing the rotation of the earth, the work of Pickering on freezing mixtures, and some of the work of Rooseboom on heterogeneous equilibria. Finally, he left clues that led directly to the discovery of the noble gases, some of which are so elusive that the last of them wasn’t found until 1962.

What an amazing man Cavendish was. He devoted his entire life to the pursuit of scientific discovery in a range of fields. He fully shut himself off from all distractions. He did not work to gain recognition. He worked for the joy of finding out new things. A man who truly achieved flow.

Adapted from “ A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson