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Henry Cavendish – the making of a great scientist
Brian Cox describes how Henry Cavendish was very shy and quite eccentric, but also incredibly curious and very wealthy. Cox repeats Cavendish’s experiments to produce and investigate hydrogen and its reaction with oxygen to produce water, deducing the formula of water as H2O, despite not really believing this himself! Cox then goes on to describe the contribution that Cavendish made to the foundation of the Royal Institution, where members of the public could listen to lectures given by scientists.
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