Combustible character: Brian Maye on prickly Irish chemist William Higgins

Irish Times

06-05-2025

Irish chemist William Higgins, who died 200 years ago either this or last month (the exact date is unknown), was an early proponent of atomic theory and his life offers insights into the emergence of chemistry as a career during the Industrial Revolution. He could be a prickly individual, who engaged in personal clashes during his lifetime, but also a person of great charm.
Born in 1762/3 in Collooney, Co
Sligo
, the younger of two sons of Thomas Higgins, he came from a medical family. Nothing is known about his mother and little is known about his early years except that as a young man he became an apprentice chemist at his uncle's school of practical chemistry in Soho, London. His uncle's tutoring developed in him a devotion to experimental chemistry, and he later expanded on some of his uncle's ideas on the nature of matter.
Following a mineralogical tour of England in 1785 that included visiting chemical manufacturers, he entered Oxford as a student and was also a lecture assistant. In the Ashmolean Museum laboratory he continued his own experiments but, for reasons unknown, left Oxford in 1788 without taking a degree. He returned to London.
A central issue in chemistry at this time was the true nature of combustion, according to Patricia Byrne, who wrote the entry on Higgins in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. The 'phlogiston theory' held sway – it was posited that all combustible matter contained the substance phlogiston, which escaped in the form of fire on combustion. Familiar with French research that tied in with his own experimental results, Higgins advanced his own ideas to reject Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids (1787) by chemist Richard Kirwan, who was also Irish. Higgins's A Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Anti-Phlogistic Theories (1789) became his most famous work. It was the first and one of the best defences of the anti-phlogistic position in English and contributed to the theory's demise.
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'However, it holds additional interest regarding the question of priority in the origin and development of chemical atomic theory, and it is for this that Higgins's name is best known. Pioneering the use of the 'ultimate particle' (ie atom) as a means of explaining his anti-phlogistic theory, he later claimed it pre-empted the development of the atomic theory in 1801-08 by John Dalton,' according to Byrne.
Higgins's Experiments and Observations on the Atomic Theory and Electrical Phenomena (1814) tried to prove his claim and virtually accused Dalton of plagiarism. Dalton defended himself by saying he was unaware of Higgins's work and although the latter lost the argument, the controversy continued off and on for more than a century after his death, with Dalton being generally seen as the first to proffer a systematic atomic theory.
Higgins fell out with his uncle, probably over the phlogiston theory, and was out of work until appointed chemist to the government-supported Apothecaries' Hall in Dublin in 1791. Kirwan magnanimously recommended him for the position, clearly showing no resentment over their previous differences over phlogiston. The position included accommodation as well as a salary but working hours were long and Higgins was charged with raising the quality of Irish pharmaceutical products. When the Apothecaries Company had financial problems, Kirwan again helped Higgins gain appointment as chemist to the Dublin Society and he became professor of chemistry and mineralogy there until his death, with a substantial salary of £300 a year.
Also a part-time chemist for the Irish Linen Board from 1795-1822, he did important work on more economical and safer bleaching processes using calcium sulphide, and published his findings as Essay on the Theory and Practice of Bleaching (1799).
He also did much to popularise science in Ireland, organising through the Dublin Society, lecture courses on chemistry for its members and the general public. His A Syllabus of a Course of Chemistry (1801), which was a 40-lecture society laboratory course, 'shows that he kept abreast of scientific developments', according to Byrne. Elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1794, he was on the council of its science committee for many years.
'His blunt personality led to many clashes during his lifetime with (among others) his uncle, possibly some of his professors at Oxford, the Apothecaries' Hall and the Dublin Society,' Byrne remarked, and he was ordered not to interfere with other Dublin Society professors' lectures in 1814.
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From Democritus to Einstein, the long search for the tiny atom
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Higgins lived at several Dublin addresses, latterly at 75 Grafton Street, where he died in May/June 1825. Where he's buried is unknown but his will (April 28th, 1825) showed he'd accumulated considerable wealth due to the purchase of property, all of which he left to his nephew, Capt Charles Higgins.