Papers on mathematics, dynamics and mechanics

This grouping of records covers Cavendish's work in mathematics, dynamics and mechanics including items relating to the Schiehallion Experiment and his thoughts on flying. They were examined by Dean George Peacock, English mathematician and Anglican cleric who founded the British algebra of logic, in the late 1840s/early 1850s.

It is difficult to date Henry Cavendish's work on mathematics, dynamics and mechanics. The explanation of physical phenomena by mathematical thought and reason was one of his permanent interests. Sir Joseph Larmor F.R.S. states that "if he had no other claim to renown he would be entitled to rank high amount the theoretical physicists of his period" (Thorpe 1921 Vol. II, p399). Larmor further considers that Cavendish's time and concentration of these wide-ranging studies, combined with his experiments in other scientific areas, "were amply sufficient to account for the strengthening of Cavendish's habits of reserve and isolation. He was a natural philosopher so profound and universal as to have no time to be anything else".