Cavendish Laboratory : Henry Cavendish memorial window in Peterhouse

Cavendish Laboratory

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Henry Cavendish (1731 – 1810) was a distant relative of William Cavendish after whom the Laboratory is named. Henry Cavendish discovered hydrogen and also carried out the Cavendish experiment to measure the mass of the Earth (or, equivalently, evaluate the gravitational constant). He studied at Peterhouse in the years 1748 -1751 but left without taking a degree. He was a brilliant, but very shy, physicist whose pioneering works on electricity only became widely known after Maxwell edited his writings for publication in the 1870s.</p>