WOLLASTON, WILLIAM Hyde, was great-grandson of the preceding, and son of the Rev. Francis Wollaston, rector of Chiselhurst, and of St Vedast, Foster-lane, and precentor of St David’s, who died in 1815. His father had seventeen children. William, his second son, was born on [7:21:914]the 6th of August 1766, and received his academical education at Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of M. D. in 1793.

He first settled as a medical practitioner at Bury St Edmund’s; but meeting with little success, he removed to London, where however he was not more fortunate in his profession. The office of physician to St George’s Hospital falling vacant, he was one of the candidates for the appointment; and on the election of his rival, Dr Pemberton, he was so much chagrined by his defeat, that he resolved to abandon the profession of medicine, and expressed his determination never again to write a prescription, were it even for his own father; and from this time his attention was wholly directed to natural science. Although almost every branch of science at different times engaged the attention of Dr Wollaston, chemistry was that to which he was most ardently devoted; and it is on his important discoveries in this department of natural philosophy that his reputation will chiefly rest. In pursuing his inquiries, he usually made his experiments on very small specimens of the substance which he wished to analyse. He possessed an uncommon neatness of hand, and invented the most ingenious methods of determining the properties and constituents of very minute quantities of matter. Among the delicate instruments which he was accustomed to make, was a sliding rule of chemical equivalents, and a galvanic battery of such small dimensions that it was contained in a thimble. He produced wire of platina so extremely fine as to be almost imperceptible to the naked eye. To him we are indebted for the discovery of the malleability of platinum, a discovery which is supposed to have yielded him above L.30,000; and he is likewise said to have derived great pecuniary advantages from several of his other discoveries and inventions, which, as they were generally of a practically useful nature, were calculated to produce a lucrative return.

Dr Wollaston was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1793, and second secretary on the 30th November 1806. His communications to the Philosophical Transactions were numerous and important. On the 30th November 1828, the Royal Society awarded to him one of the royal medals for his essay “On a method of rendering Platina malleable.” Towards the end of 1828 he was seized with the disorder of which he died, and which was afterwards ascertained to be an effusion of blood in the ventricles of the brain. Feeling that his end was approaching, and being anxious that the knowledge of his discoveries and inventions should be preserved for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, he devoted his numbered hours, in the midst of pain and disease, to dictate such information as he thought worthy of being preserved.

At the time of his death, which occurred on the 22d. December 1828, Dr Wollaston was senior fellow of Caius College. In February 18'29, Dr Fitton, as president of the Geological Society, of which Dr Wollaston was for some time one of the vice-presidents, concluded his annual address with the following encomium on this eminent individual: “It would be difficult to name a man who so well combined the qualities of an English gentleman and a philosopher, or whose life better deserves the eulogium given by the first of our orators to one of our most distinguished public characters; for it was marked by a constant wish and endeavour to be useful to mankind.”