Kirwan, Richard

Kekule, Friedrich August, 73, 198, 206, 296 Kirwan, Richard, 27 Koch, Robert, 296... 

Kirwan, Richard. Experiments and Observations on the Specific Gravities and attractive Powers of various saline Substances. Philosophical Transactions 71, 1781, 7-41. Translation Journal de physique 24, 1784, 134-156. 

Kirwan, Richard. Conclusion of the Experiment and Observations concerning the Attractive Powers of the Mineral Acids. Philosophical Transactions 73, 1783, 15-84. Translation Journal de physique 27, 1785, 250-261, 321-335, 447-457 28,1786, 94-109. 

Kirwan, Richard. Elements of Mineralogy (London P. Elmsly, 1784). 

Kirwan, Richard. Essay on the Analysis of Mineral Waters (London, 1784). Kirwan, Richard. An Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids (London printed by J. Davis for P. Elmsly, 1787). 

Kirwan, Richard. Essai sur le phlogistique et sur la constitution des acides (Paris Rue et Hotel Serpente, 1788). 

Richard Kirwan mentioned the ingenious, accurate, and skilfully conducted analyses of Dr. Kennedy, who bids fair to rival the excellence attained by the greatest masters of that sublime and difficult art (57). 

Dr. Crawford showed in this paper that the salt (strontium chloride) obtained by dissolving the new mineral in hydrochloric acid differs in several respects from barium chloride. It is much more soluble in hot water than in cold, the strontium salt is much the more soluble in water and produces a greater cooling effect, and these two chlorides have different crystalline forms. He concluded therefore that the mineral which is sold at Strontean [sic] for aerated terra ponderosa possesses different qualities from that earth, although at the same time it must be admitted that in many particulars they have a very near resemblance to each other. He also stated that it is probable that the Scotch mineral is a new species of earth which has not hitherto been sufficiently examined and that Mr. Babington. . . has for some time entertained a suspicion that the Scotch mineral is not the true aerated terra ponderosa. In 1790 Dr. Crawford sent a specimen of the new mineral (strontianite, strontium carbonate) to Richard Kirwan for analysis (50, 66). 

Richard Kirwan, 1733-1812. Irish chemist. Author of a treatise on water analyses, which is one of the first books on quantitative analysis. Famous for his early researches on strontia. 

Lavoisier s ideas met initial resistance from the established chemical community. After all, phlogiston had been used for a century to explain chemistry, and natural philosophers had explained their work based on phlogiston theory. The leading chemists of the day, including Richard Kirwan (1733-1812), Priestley, Cavendish, andTor-bern Bergman (1735-1784), not only rejected Lavoisier s ideas, but they also were antagonistic toward him. This was not to say... 

We have already seen in Chapter Nine how James Keir, the translator of Macquer s chemical works, conceived the operational idea of chemical simple body. But no one offered a more explicit definition before the new nomenclature than the Irish chemist Richard Kirwan in 1784 ... 

Richard Kirwan in 1781 and in 1782 undertook his analyses under the belief that the values could provide a measure of the affinity of an acid for different bases. He reported his analytical values in the form of a table. The following example is offered to illustrate the argument and the difficulty in the conception. 

The century-long focus of theoretical attention on affinity led much of the analytical chemistry at the end of the eighteenth century to interpret these quantitative data as measures of affinity, as we have illustrated with Richard Kirwans work. But the lack of systematic analytical techniques and general rules of quantitative analysis left every analyst vulnerable to challenge by others with different results. 

The most productive of English chemists of the latter half of the eighteenth century, Joseph Black (1728-1799), Henry Cavendish (1731-j1810), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), and Richard Kirwan (1733-1812),were all plilogiston-ists, although Black and Kirwan indeed ultimately acknowledged the force of Lavoisier s logic, after their own chemical work was over. 

E. Grison, M. Goupil and P. Bret, eds, A Scientific Correspondence during the Chemical Revoution Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, and Richard Kirwan, 1782-1802, Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1994. 

Quoted in Jankovic, Reading the Skies, p. 154. Jankovic points to a range of other authors who likened the atmosphere to a chemical laboratory at this time, including Le Roy, George Adams, Antoine Francois Fourcroy, Richard Kirwan, George Shaw, William Nicholson and Thomas Thomson. 

Franz-Karl Achard, Carl Friedrich Wenzel, Richard Kirwan, Laplace and Lavoisier, and John Elliot offered various schemes to this end. ... 

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