Henry Power facts for kids
Henry Power (1623–1668) was an important English doctor and scientist. He was one of the very first people to be chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a famous group of scientists in England.
A Life of Science
Henry Power started studying at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1641. He earned his first degree in 1644. He became good friends with another famous scientist, Sir Thomas Browne, and they often wrote to each other about science.
After finishing his studies, Henry became a doctor around 1655. He worked in a town called Halifax for some time. Later, he moved to a place called New Hall near Elland.
On July 1, 1663, Henry Power was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. This was a big honor, as he and Sir Justinian Isham, 2nd Baronet were the very first members to be elected.
Henry Power passed away at New Hall on December 23, 1668. He was buried in a church in Wakefield, where a special plaque remembers him.
His Main Book
Henry Power wrote only one book that was published, called Experimental Philosophy. This book talked about several interesting scientific ideas:
- Microscopy: This is the study of very tiny things using a microscope.
- Corpuscularian theory: This was an early idea that everything is made up of tiny, invisible particles.
- Experiments with the vacuum: He explored what happens in an empty space, or a vacuum.
Discovering Boyle's Law
Henry Power worked with his friend, Richard Towneley, on some important experiments. Together, they discovered a key rule about how gases behave. This rule explains the connection between the pressure and the volume of a gas. It means that if you squeeze a gas into a smaller space, its pressure goes up.
This discovery was written down in Henry Power's book, Experimental Philosophy. However, another famous scientist named Robert Boyle published the same idea a year before Power's book came out. Because Boyle was a well-known and important scientist, the rule became famous as "Boyle's Law." Even though Henry Power and Richard Towneley discovered it first, their contributions were often forgotten over time.
