Science History 1 - Joseph Black

7 min readJun 11, 2021

“Die Geschichte der Wissenschaft ist die Wissenschaft selbst”- Goethe

“The history of science is science itself.” I have chosen to start this story with the words of Goethe. As he meant, science and its history cannot be seperated. Thus, to understand science, one should not only be interested in modern science but also the life of past scientists and philosophers including the mistakes they have made, the challenges they have faced, the chances they have got, while they were getting deeper and deeper in the great ocean of truth to eleminate what is wrong so that they can get closer to find what is right.

This is my first science history story. My purpose of writing about science history is to help people learn about underrated scientist who achieved great successes and improved science. Some of them will be people you have heard of, but never read about and some of them will be the people that you have never heard of. So let’s get started.

Early Chemistry and Alchemy

In 1687 Isaac Newton published the book in which he collected the known physics of his time, combined with methods that he pioneered to develop. By doing that, he created a source for future scientist that expedited works of scholars greatly. New developments were generally in physics, yet chemisty was overshadowed by alchemy.

Alchemy was generally concerned with the transmutation of cheap metals into gold or finding an elixir of immortality. Furthermore, alchemy didn’t have metholgy of science. It had a mystical work with all this Rebis, Tabula Samaragdina and more (This is a story that i will post about later, that’s why, i don’t want to mention about it a lot now). That’s why, alchemy was forbidden for a quite while, on top of that, considered as magic. Dealing with magic could have cause one to end up being sent to hanging tree. Nevertheless, kings and queens sometimes turned a blind eye to these efforts of magic in the hope of filling the empty palace vaults. Interestingly, Newton’s success of filling the vault of England, after he became master of the mint, sometimes attributed that he was a alchemist. Considered all of these, efforts of alcehemist has continuated until 18th century. Nonetheless, it was time to bridge the gap for chemistry.

Early life and education

Joseph Black was born in April 16th, 1728, just after the year Newton died. He was 6th son of Scottish migrant couple Margaret Gorden and John Black. His father, John Black, was a wine merchant and he had a vineyard in countryside. Joseph stayed here until he was twelve years old and then sent to Belfast for his education.

He learnt Latin and Greek in Belfast, then accepted to University of Glasgow in 1946 for art education. His father, on the other hand, didn’t want his son to go on art education, instead, he wanted him to study medicine. That’s why he started his education of medicine and anatomy at the same university. Here he met someone who would play a big part in his life. One year before he accepted into University of Glasgow, a scientist and inventor named William Cullun had been started teaching Chemistry at the university. Joseph took several of his lectures for three years. He graduated between 1751–1752 and went to Edinburgh where he was going to set out for his own discoveries.

Magnesia Alba

In this period, it was very popular to improve medicines for urinary calculi and became especially popular after first prime minister of Great Britain, Robery Walpole, has got rid of his urinary calculi problem after he received an alkaline medicine. Black studied about a weak base called magnesia alba (magnesium oxide) and made it commercial for those who had problems with stomach acid when he was at University of Glasgow. He thought magnesia alba could also solve problems of people with urinary calculi and set out to find a medicine for it. He conducted a rigorous study similar to today’s methodology, despite that, his research didn’t provide an improvement on urinary calculi problem as he wanted. Nevertheless, he found out that the reactions of magnesia alba and acids produce gas. This gas was the molecule that we call carbon dioxide today.

During this period, alkalines were divided into two sub category, weak and caustic. He discovered that magnesium oxide loses its weight when heated. Since there was no liquid coming out, he thought the air in the substance was coming out. When he realized that there were foams as a result of the reaction of caustic alkalines with acids, but this did not happen in weak alkalines, he thought that weak alkalines had “fixed air”, which is released by reactions with weak acids, not with caustic alkalines. During his follow-up research, he discovered the released air wasn’t the air itself, rather it was a part of air. By discovering that, he showed air is made up of component, a mixture of gases.

Receiving pHD and his works about heat

After he wrote a doctorate thesis about his works of magnesia alba and publishing them in 1756, he earned his PhD degree. He later became a professor of medicine at the University of Glasgow, where he was recommended by William Cullen when he was offered a place in the chemistry chair. He was giving chemistry lectures and was working as a private doctor when he had leisure time. In his ongoing work on fixed air, he discovered that fixed air was also released as a result of burning coal and breathing animals. After this period, he turned his attention to more heat and began to study the states of matter. He discovered the latent heat event, which does not cause a change in temperature, while causing the state of the substance to change during the transitional phase between the states of matter. Thus, this work revealed the difference between heat and temperature, so that, he coined the term “specific heat”, the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of the substance by 1 °C.

Joseph Black visiting James Watt at the University of Glasgow.

During this period, He also talked with James Watt, who was at the same university and was a prominent figure in the Industrial Revolution, and even became close friends. Here Joseph Black helped James Watt’s work of calculating the latent heat needed for evaporation. As a result, James Watt had to develop a different design. Although the two later walked different career paths, communication between them continued largely. He returned to Edinburgh in 1766, where he found a place on the chemistry bench, with the appointment of William Cullen to another bench. In this stage of life he was more interested in passing on his knowledge to students rathet than theoretical studies. He also spent his time making recommendations to property owners on how the chemical industry could thrive in and around Scotland. He continued his studies and lectures until 1797. He never married and died at home on November 10, 1799, at the age of 71.

Some notes on his life

An important and interesting thing to note is that Joseph Black has not written many articles about his work. Many of his studies, especially discoveries on heat, were disseminated thanks to a large number of his students and other people attending his lectures or other people publishing his inventions.

His work on the components of air and carbon dioxide was not known at the time and he was an important figure of the rise of chemistry in the collapse of alchemy. The concept of heat was a problem that needed to be solved during this period, and studies on this subject have contributed to the industrial revolution, furthermore, it also led to Lavoiser, who would have a great impact on the development of chemistry after him.

“Upon the whole, Chymistry is as yet but an opening science, closely connected with the useful and ornamental arts, and worthy the attention of the liberal mind. And it must always become more and more so: for though it is only of late, that is has been looked upon in that light, the great progress already made in Chymical knowledge, gives us a pleasant prospect of rich additions to it. The Science is now studied on solid and rational grounds. While our knowledge is imperfect, it is apt to run into error: but Experiment is the thread that will lead us out of the labyrinth.” — Joseph Black