Joseph Black

Scottish physicist and chemist (1728–1799)

AI overview

Joseph Black was a Scottish scientist of the 18th century who made important discoveries in chemistry and physics, including groundbreaking work on heat and gases. His findings laid the foundation for modern chemistry and thermodynamics, influencing how scientists understood the behavior of matter and energy.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Joseph
Family name: Black
Gender: male
Citizenship: Kingdom of Great Britain
Place of birth: Bordeaux
Place of death: Edinburgh
Occupation: university teacher
Educated at: University of Glasgow
Employer: University of Glasgow
Languages spoken: English language
Native language: English language
Notable work: latent heat
Doctoral advisor: William Cullen
Doctoral student: James Edward Smith
Field of work: medicine
Image: Black Joseph.jpg

Show 8 more facts

place of burial: Greyfriars Kirkyard
Commons category: Joseph Black
date of birth: 1728-04-16
date of death: 1799-12-06
student: Benjamin Rush
name in native language: Joseph Black
writing language: English language
P8168: Ternovo

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Encyclopedic overview

Joseph Black (16 April 1728 – 6 December 1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. He was professor of anatomy and chemistry at the University of Glasgow for 10 years from 1756, and then professor of medicine and chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1766, teaching and lecturing there for more than 30 years.

The chemistry buildings at both the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow are named after Black.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Joseph Black” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.