Grove, William Robert

He graduated from the University of Oxford . Prolonged illness at first prevented Grove from following the intended career as a lawyer ; he turned to the study of electricity ; in 1839 he invented the famous galvanic cell , later named after him. The element consisted of zinc and platinum electrodes, placed in solutions of diluted sulfuric and concentrated nitric acids, respectively, separated by a porous septum.

In 1840 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of London ^[1] .

In 1840-1847 he was a professor of experimental physics at the London Institute. In 1842, he gave a lecture on the successes of physics since the opening of this institute. In this lecture, he first put forward the doctrine of the mutual convertibility of various forces of nature, heat, electricity, etc., as various kinds of movements or as various forms of a single energy (force). These ideas were developed in his book "On correlation of Physical forces", which was the result of a course taught by Grove in 1843. This book was a great success and contributed to the dissemination of new physical ideas that led to the formulation of the law of conservation of energy in its most general form.

In 1846, Grove first demonstrated experimentally the phenomenon of electrolytic dissociation of water.

In 1847, Grove received a medal from the Royal Society of London for "incandescent by means of a galvanic current and the decomposition of water into gases, its constituents, by heat."

Numerous articles by Grove in Transactions of Royal Society and in the Philosophical Magazine were devoted to various methods of obtaining galvanic current, the action of electric discharge and galvanic current, the application of daguerreotype to the study of electrical phenomena; Already in the 1850s Grove proposed using glow of electric glow wires to illuminate mines and mines.

Since 1853, Grove has been participating in the political life of England . For several years he was a leader in the constituencies of South Wales and Chester .

In 1866, at a congress in Nottingham, Grove was elected president of the British Association of Sciences , with the subject of his speech he chose "The Continuity of Natural Phenomena"; he argued that changes in the inorganic world, the development of organized beings and the progress of human knowledge are the result of very small and gradual changes.

Raised in the nobility of dignity in 1872, Grove held the highest judicial posts. In 1887, he retired from official activities, receiving the honorary title of member of the Privy Council.

In 1935, the International Astronomical Union named William Robert Grove as a crater on the visible side of the moon .

• William Robert Grove. The correlation of physical forces . - London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1862 .-- 284 p.
• William Robert Grove. Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science . - London: Taylor & Francis, 1866 .-- 38 p.

• John Wilson, William Wilson, MCI, James M Wilson. William Robert Grove: The Lawyer Who Invented the Fuel Cell . - Metolius Ltd, 2000 .-- 140 p. - ISBN 0955719305 .
• Yakovlev V.A. Grove, William Robert // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• GROVE (Grove) William Robert // Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2000.
• Temples Yu. A. Grove, William Robert (Grove William Robert) // Physicists: Biographical Reference / Ed. A.I. Akhiezer . - Ed. 2nd, rev. and add. - M .: Nauka , 1983 .-- S. 93 .-- 400 p. - 200,000 copies. (per.)