Grove, SIR WILLIAM ROBERT

Grove, SIR WILLIAM ROBERT, lawyer and physicist, was born at Swansea, 11th July 1811. He studied at Brasenose, Oxford, and in 1835 was called to the bar; in 1871 he was raised to the bench, receiving knighthood in 1872; and by the Judicature Act (1875) becoming a judge in the High Court of Justice. He retired from the bench in 1887. He greatly distinguished himself in the subjects of electricity and optics, and was professor of Natural Science at the London Institution from 1840 to 1847. In 1839 he invented the powerful voltaic battery known by his name. He contributed extensively to scientific journals, and published several very important lectures, as those on the Progress of Physical Science (1842), in which he propounded the theory of the mutual convertibility of the natural forces, on the assumption of their all being modes of motion; the Correlation of the Physical Forces (1846), a development of the same views; Voltaic Ignition (1847); and the Continuity of Natural Phenomena (1866). He was president of the British Association in 1866, and was a Fellow of many learned societies. He died on the 3d August 1896.