Royal Board of Mines

In 1752 H. T. Scheffer published a detailed scientific description of platinum, or white gold, as he called it, and, with the aid of arsenic, succeeded in fusing it (42). Henric Theophil Scheffer was bom in Stockholm on December 28, 1710, where his father was secretary to the Royal Board of Mines. After serving an apprenticeship under Georg Brandt, he established his own laboratory and made trips to the mines to learn firsthand the close connection between smelting and assaying. 

At the age of eighteen he was attached to the Bergskollegium, The Royal Swedish Board for Mining and Metallurgy, and he devoted all his life to his country s industry. He also became an authority abroad. Many new Swedish establishments were designed and built up under the direction of Rinman. 

On his way back to Sweden, Georg Brandt made a thorough visit to the mines in Harz in Germany and he gave the Royal Board a description of the mining there (see Figure 30.1). 

Dr. Pethrick is on the editorial boards of several polymer and adhesion journals and was on the Royal Society of Chemistry Education Board. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Institute of Materials, Metals and Mining. Previously he chaired the Review of Science Provision 16-19 in Scotland and the restructuring of the HMD provision in Chemistry. He was involved in the creation of the revised regulations for accreditation by the Royal Society of Chemistry of the MSci level qualifications in Chemistry. He was for a number of years the Deputy Chair of the EPSRC IGDS panel and involved in a number of reviews of the courses developed and offered under this program. He has been a member of the review panel for polymer science in Denmark and Sweden and the National Science Foundation in the USA. 

Young Davy was befriended by Davies Giddy (St. Erth, Cornwall, 6 March 1767-Eastbourne, 24 December 1839), who took his wife s name Gilbert in 1817 and succeeded Davy as president of the Royal Society in 1827. He owned a copper mine and showed Davy the apparatus in the laboratory. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, boarded with Mrs. Davy from 1797, and he and Davy became friends. 

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