Hawksbee

Hawksbee, or HAUKSBE, FRANCIS, physicist, was already a well-known experimentalist when in 1705 he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he died soon after 1713. (Not to be confused with him is Francis Hawksbee the younger, 1687–1763, apparently his son, who was also an electrician and skilled instrument-maker, and was in 1723 appointed clerk and housekeeper to the Royal Society.) Hawksbee the elder carried further the tentative observations by Dr Gilbert and Boyle on the subject of electricity, and by his experiments laid the scientific foundations of that branch of knowledge. He contributed forty-three memoirs to the Philosophical Transactions, chiefly on chemistry and electricity, between 1704 and 1713. His chief independent work, published in 1709, was entitled Physico-Mechanical Experiments on various Subjects; touching Light and Electricity producible on the Attrition of Bodies. He is also well known as the improver of the earlier air-pumps of Boyle, Papin, and Hooke, and as the first who used glass in the electrical machine.