“Dr. Joseph Black was a striking and beautiful person; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black. No lad could be irreverent towards a man so pale, so gentle, so elegant, and so illustrious. So he glided, like a spirit, through our rather mischievous sportiveness, unharmed. He died, seated, with a bowl of milk on his knee, of which his ceasing to live did not spill a drop; a departure which it seemed, after the event happened, might have been foretold of this attenuated philosophical gentleman.” So wrote a grateful Henry, Lord Cockburn of his erstwhile teacher.

Joseph Black was born in Bordeaux, France the son of an Irish wine importer. He was educated, and later taught, at the University of Glasgow. In 1752 he moved to the more prestigious University of Edinburgh where, along with his friends Adam Smith and James Hutton, he was to become one of the ornaments of the Scottish Enlightenment. He published sparingly but his M.D. thesis “Experiments on Magnesia Alba, Quicklime, and Some Other Alcaline Substances” was a foundation document of chemical stoichiometry. Later he was to discover latent heat.

A lifelong teacher in Glasgow and Edinburgh, he influenced several generations of British and American students, and with the posthumous publication of his Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, he continued to do so long after his fastidious death.

References
C.C. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. II, pp. 173-183. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.
W. Ramsay, The Life and Letters of Joseph Black, MD. London: Constable, 1918.

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