Abstract
Davies Gilbert, F.R.S., 1769–1839 ON December 24, 1839, Davies Gilbert, president of the Royal Society from November 6, 1827 to November 30, 1830, died at Eastbourne at the age of seventy-two. Gilbert was born on March 6, 1769, at Tredrea, in the parish of St. Erth, Cornwall, his father being the Rev. Edward Giddy, curate of that place, who had married an heiress of considerable property. Educated at first by his father, he afterwards attended schools at Penzance and Bristol and in 1785 became a gentleman-commoner of Pembroke College, Oxford. He had already devoted much study to the physical sciences, and he became known as “the Cornish philosopher”. In 1791, at tho early age of twenty-four, he was elected F.R.S. Being free to follow his own inclinations, ho left Oxford in 1793 and returned to Cornwall, acting as sheriff, dividing his time between his magisterial duties and the cultivation of science and literature, and was the friend and correspondent of Beddoes, Davy, Hitchins, Hellins, Trevithick and Hornblower. In 1804, a now sphere of activities opened for him by his election as M.P. for Helston. Two years later he was elected to represent Bodmin and he continued to sit for that borough until December 1832. “He was,” says Wild, “emphatically the representative of scientific interests in the House of Commons, and contributed by his exertions to carry many very important objects. Indeed, he was continually called on to serve on committees of inquiry touching scientific and financial questions.” In 1808 he married Mary Ann Gilbert, only niece of Charles Gilbert of Eastbourne and then assumed the name and arms of Gilbert.
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Science News a Century Ago. Nature 144, 1058 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441058a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441058a0