257 



chiefly superintended by his father, who was an accomplished clas- 

 sical scholar; and in 1785 he became a gentleman commoner of 

 Pembroke College, Oxford, where he attended the lectures of Dr. 

 Beddoes on chemistry, Dr. Sibthorp on botany, and Mr. Hornby 

 on geometry and astronomy, and devoted himself with very unu- 

 sual diligence to the study of mathematics and the natural sciences. 

 He used to boast in after life, with very becoming pride, that he was 

 the first student of his class in the University of Oxford, who had 

 ever read the Principia of Newton. 



In 1791, he was elected a Fellow of this Society, and became as- 

 sociated from that time forward with the most eminent men of sci- 

 ence in the metropolis. He had, in very early life, appreciated the 

 extraordinary combination of poetical and philosophical genius in 

 his friend and fellow-countryman Humphry Davy, at that time in 

 a very humble capacity ; and by recommending him, first, as an as- 

 sistant to Dr. Beddoes in his experiments on the medical effects of 

 gaseous inspirations, and, secondly, to the Royal Institution, he had 

 the merit and good fortune of contributing to rescue from obscurity 

 one of the greatest discoverers in modern chemistry. In the year 

 1804, he became Member of Parliament for Helston, and in 1806 

 for Bodmin, a borough in his own immediate neighbourhood, which 

 he continued to represent until the era of Parliamentary Reform in 

 1832. He was emphatically the representative of scientific interests 

 in the House of Commons, and contributed by his exertions to carry 

 many very important projects, including amongst them the great 

 breakwater at Plymouth and the bill for the revision of weights and 

 measures ; a bill founded upon the report of a commission of which 

 he was a member, in conjunction with Captain Kater, Dr. Young 

 and Dr. Wollaston. 



Mr. Davies Gilbert was the author of Papers in our Transactions 

 " On the Mathematical Theory of Suspension Bridges*," with parti- 

 cular reference to the Menai bridge, which was at that time in pro- 

 gress, and the curvature of which was considerably modified in con- 

 formity with the results of his calculations : — " On the Progressive 

 Improvements made in the Efficiency of Steam-engines in Cornwall, 

 with investigations of the methods best adapted for imparting great 

 Angular Velocities f," in which he first distinctly defined and made 

 known to men of science what is termed the duty of steam-engines, 

 from the correct observation of which so many important practical 

 improvements have followed : — " On the Nature of Negative and 

 Imaginary Quantities J," which contains many ingenious views, al- 

 though they have been in a great measure superseded by later 

 speculations on this subject. Mr. Gilbert was a mathematician of 

 the old school ; but the papers to which we have just referred are 

 very creditable specimens of the clearness with which he appre- 

 hended the bearing of some simple theoretical truths upon very 

 important practical questions. 



* For 1826, Part III. p. 202. \ For 1830, Part 1. p. 121. 



X For 1831, Part II. p. 341. 



