President's Address. 299 



Sir William Grove presented the rare spectacle of steady and dis- 

 tinguished devotion to science in spite of the claims of an exacting 

 profession. Grove was an eminent lawyer. Called to the bar in 1835, 

 he was for some time kept from active work by ill health ; but he 

 subsequently acquired a considerable practice, and becoming a Queen's 

 Counsel in 1853, was for some years the leader of the South Wales 

 Circuit. His practice was mainly in patent cases, and the reputation 

 he obtained in that field led to his being appointed a member of the 

 Royal Commission on the Patent Laws. His work as an advocate 

 was, however, by no means confined to such matters ; he was one of 

 the counsel Serjeant Shee and Dr. Kenealy being the others who 

 defended the Rugeley poisoner, William Palmer, and he was engaged 

 in many other causes celebres. 



The eminent position to which he had risen at the bar led to his 

 appointment in November, 1871, as a Judge of the old Court of 

 Common Pleas, a post which in 1875 was converted by the Judica- 

 ture Act into that of a Judge of the High Court. This office he held 

 until his retirement in 1887, when he became a member of the Privy 

 Council. 



Throughout the greater part of his long and distinguished legal 

 career, Grove's love of science impelled him to devote a large share 

 of his energies to its pursuit. It is remarkable that his first paper, 

 which was communicated to the British Association in 1839, and 

 which also appeared in the ' Comptes Rendus,' and in Poggendorff's 

 ' Annalen,' contained a description of the " Grove's cell," which 

 was afterwards used in every physical laboratory in the world. This 

 was succeeded by a long series of memoirs, chiefly on electrical sub- 

 jects, among which one of the best known is that on the gas battery. 

 In 1842 he delivered, at the London Institution, an address which 

 was, in the following year, developed into the celebrated series of 

 lectures : " On the Correlation of Physical Forces." In these he dis- 

 cussed what we should now call the transformations of energy ; and, 

 though Professor Tait, in his " Historical Sketch of the Science of 

 Energy," * assigns precedence in calling " attention to the gener- 

 ality of such transformations " to Mrs. Somerville, there can be no 

 doubt that Grove was an independent and very advanced thinker on 

 that subject. 



For many years Sir William Grove took a very prominent part in 

 the affairs of the Royal Society, and was one of the most active pro- 

 moters of the reform of its constitution, which took place in 1847. 

 It is largely to his efforts that we owe our present system of electing 

 only a specified number of Fellows in each year. He was also one 

 of the founders of the " Philosophical Club." 



He was President of the British Association in 1866, and, in the 

 * ' Thermodynamics/ p. 58. 



