author
Joseph Black
1728–1799
A pioneering Scottish chemist and physician, he helped transform the study of heat and gases through careful, clear experiments. His work on carbon dioxide, latent heat, and specific heat shaped the foundations of modern chemistry and physics.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Bordeaux on April 16, 1728, to a Scottish family involved in the wine trade, Joseph Black was educated in Belfast before studying at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. He trained as a physician, but his lasting fame came from the way he used measurement and experiment to explain how substances and heat behave.
Black is best known for identifying what he called “fixed air,” now known as carbon dioxide, and for developing the ideas of latent heat and specific heat. Those discoveries helped make chemistry more precise and also influenced later work on steam and energy at a time when science and industry were changing fast.
He taught at both Glasgow and Edinburgh and became one of the most respected scientific lecturers of his day. Remembered for the clarity of his teaching as well as the importance of his discoveries, he remains a key figure in the history of chemistry.