Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/283

Rh chiefly superintended by his father, who was an accomplished clas- sical scholar; and in 1785 he became a gentleman commoner of Pembroke College, Oxford, where he attended the lectures of Dr. Beddoes on chemistry, Dr. Sibthorp on botany, and Mr. Hornby on geometry and astronomy, and devoted himself with very unu- sual diligence to the study of mathematics and the natural sciences. He used to boast in after life, with very becoming pride, that he was the first student of his class in the University of Oxford, who had ever read the Principia of Newton.

In 1791, he was elected a Fellow of this Society, and became as- sociated from that time forward with the most eminent men of sci- ence in the metropolis. He had, in very early life, appreciated the extraordinary combination of poetical and philosophical genius in his friend and fellow-countryman Humphry Davy, at that time in a very humble capacity ; and by recommending him, first, as an as- sistant to Dr. Beddoes in his experiments on the medical effects of gaseous inspirations, and, secondly, to the Royal Institution, he had the merit and good fortune of contributing to rescue from obscurity one of the greatest discoverers in modern chemistry. In the year 1804, he became Member of Parliament for Helston, and in 1806 for Bodmin, a borough in his own immediate neighbourhood, which he continued to represent until the era of Parliamentary Reform in 1832. He was emphatically the representative of scientific interests in the House of Commons, and contributed by his exertions to carry many very important projects, including amongst them the great breakwater at Plymouth and the bill for the revision of weights and measures ; a bill founded upon the report of a commission of which he was a member, in conjunction with Captain Kater, Dr. Young and Dr. Wollaston.

Mr. Davies Gilbert was the author of Papers in our Transactions " On the Mathematical Theory of Suspension Bridges*," with parti- cular reference to the Menai bridge, which was at that time in pro- gress, and the curvature of which was considerably modified in con- formity with the results of his calculations : — " On the Progressive Improvements made in the Efficiency of Steam-engines in Cornwall, with investigations of the methods best adapted for imparting great Angular Velocities f," in which he first distinctly defined and made known to men of science what is termed the duty of steam-engines, from the correct observation of which so many important practical improvements have followed : — " On the Nature of Negative and Imaginary Quantities J," which contains many ingenious views, al- though they have been in a great measure superseded by later speculations on this subject. Mr. Gilbert was a mathematician of the old school ; but the papers to which we have just referred are very creditable specimens of the clearness with which he appre- hended the bearing of some simple theoretical truths upon very important practical questions.


 * For 1826, Part III. p. 202. \ For 1830, Part 1. p. 121.

X For 1831, Part II. p. 341.