William Higgins (chemist)

<h2 id="early-years">Early years</h2>
<p>Higgins was born in <a href="/facts/Collooney/dXkMwKRc">Collooney</a>, <a href="/facts/County_Sligo/zpx4qxQz">County Sligo</a>, Ireland, and came from a well-known medical family.  William was the second child and younger son of Thomas Higgins, a <a href="/facts/Physician/qJ3woFvG">physician</a> educated at the <a href="/facts/University_of_Edinburgh/L69HscH9">University of Edinburgh</a>.  William’s uncle <a href="/facts/Bryan_Higgins/nSt5D4Ja">Bryan Higgins</a> was also an eminent chemist.  When William was a boy he was sent to <a href="/facts/London/KozCCsy9">London</a> to live with his uncle.  Under his uncle’s guidance, William developed a strong liking for and expertise in experimental chemistry.
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<h2 id="beginning-experiments">Beginning experiments</h2>
<p>In the early 1780s William assisted in making all the experiments detailed in his uncle Bryan Higgins’ <i>Experiments and Observations Relating to <a href="/facts/Acetic_acid/uyBKA2Pd">Acetous Acid</a></i>.  In 1785 William undertook a mineralogical tour through England, also visiting a number of chemical manufacturers.  In 1788 he entered <a href="/facts/Pembroke_College,_Oxford/wTyNAh8a">Pembroke College, Oxford</a> but did not complete his degree.  His next four years after that were spent in London, where he published two editions of his most important work, the <i>Comparative View of Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories</i> which laid out much of <a href="/facts/John_Dalton/oS8grQR4">Dalton</a>'s atomic theory 19 years earlier.
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<h2 id="start-of-his-career">Start of his career</h2>
<p>After a disagreement with his uncle, William left London and went to Dublin to be a <a href="/facts/Chemist/N09K7Bdm">chemist</a> at <a href="/facts/Apothecaries%27_Hall_of_Ireland/Hkb050uT">Apothecaries Hall</a> in 1792.  William was soon busy equipping the laboratory, attending the <a href="/facts/Royal_Irish_Academy/2R9VtUPw">Royal Irish Academy</a>, and acting as a part-time chemist to the Irish Linen Board.  But when the company had financial troubles William lost his job.  At the suggestion of <a href="/facts/Richard_Kirwan/C5pEGnsF">Richard Kirwan</a>, William became supervisor of the important <a href="/facts/Leskean_Cabinet/AgnE933k">Leskean Cabinet</a> of minerals, recently acquired by the <a href="/facts/Royal_Dublin_Society/7fDby6dp">Royal Dublin Society</a>.  Soon after William became professor of chemistry to the Society.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a>
</p><p>In 1803, William had a leave of absence from the Dublin Society, which enabled him to sit on a London committee selecting a hydrometer to measure the strength of alcoholic drinks for revenue purposes.  It was in London that William met <a href="/facts/Humphry_Davy/aDNRfNou">Humphry Davy</a>, a protégé of his uncle Bryan.  Davy was one of William’s proposers to the <a href="/facts/Royal_Society/KI5yXCuV">Royal Society</a> in 1806.    William and Humphry’s relationship flourished from 1810 on, when Humphry promoted William’s claims to the discovery of the chemical atomic theory over those of their rival <a href="/facts/John_Dalton/oS8grQR4">John Dalton</a>.  William’s claims to the discovery of the chemical atomic theory is found in <i>Comparative View</i>.  William sought to make clear the mechanisms of possible reactions between ultimate particles by using diagrams of the reacting particles and the affinity forces between them.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> Evidence has recently been presented that Dalton may have been aware of the <i>Comparative View</i> when he developed his <a href="/facts/Atomic_theory/B2WvuLf6">atomic theory</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a>
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<h2 id="death">Death</h2>
<p>In June 1825, William Higgins died at <a href="/facts/Grafton_Street/QCnYuQ5b">Grafton Street</a>, Dublin.
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<h2 id="references-and-notes">References and notes</h2>

<ul><li><i>Observations and Experiments on the Atomic Theory</i>, William Higgins, Published in 1814.</li>
<li>T S Wheeler and J B Partington, <i>The Life and Work of William Higgins, Chemist 1763–1825</i> (1960)</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>"Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 8 November 2011. <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Higgins.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Higgins.aspx</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3rd Edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. p. 179. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4. <a href="0-7171-2945-4" target="_blank">0-7171-2945-4</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>"Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 8 November 2011. <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Higgins.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Higgins.aspx</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:4"><p>Grossman, Mark I. (20 December 2010). "William Higgins at the Dublin Society, 1810–20: the loss of a professorship and a claim to the atomic theory". Notes and Records. 64 (4): 417–434. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2010.0020. ISSN 0035-9149. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsnr.2010.0020" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsnr.2010.0020</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:5"><p>Grossman, Mark I. (20 December 2014). "John Dalton and the London atomists: William and Bryan Higgins, William Austin, and new Daltonian doubts about the origin of the atomic theory". Notes Rec. 68 (4): 339–356. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2014.0025. ISSN 0035-9149. PMC 4213434. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213434" target="_blank">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213434</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
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William Higgins (chemist) open-in-new

William Higgins (chemist)