William Robert Grove
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031261
Today is the birthday of Sir William Robert Grove, who was born on 11 July 1811 in Swansea, Wales. Grove worked professionally as a lawyer and judge but for the early part of his career focused on his interest in the sciences. He developed in 1839 an early electric cell, which bears his name, and the next year invented one of the first incandescent lights, which led to his Fellowship in the Royal Society. Appointed the first professor of experimental philosophy at the London Institution in 1841, his first lecture presented his theory of the “correlation of physical forces”, an early formulation of the law of the conservation of energy. In 1842 he created the first fuel cell and in doing so was the first to show that a molecule could be separated into its individual atoms.
Date in History: 11 July 1811
