Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/383

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Grove
371
Grove

guineas and a gold chronometer–presented to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of the subscribers. He was knighted on 22 May 1883, and on 26 May 1894 was made a companion of the Bath. Alfred Ernest, duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha [q. v. Suppl.], decorated him with the cross of the Order of Merit, and he received the honorary degrees of D.C.L. Durham and LL.D. Glasgow Universities. Upon his retirement from the directorship of the Royal College of Music in 1894 he still continued to take a warm and active interest in music and musicians. He was an exceedingly kind-hearted man, and took a special delight in giving a helping hand to young men. A great letter writer, his communications were characteristically reflective of his mercurial temperament, wide knowledge, boundless energy, and yet not without a touch of humour in forms of expression. For the last two years of his life he suffered from paralysis, which death relieved at his wooden house at Lower Sydenham, on 28 May 1900. His remains are interred in Ladywell cemetery, Lewisham. Grove's pupils at the Royal College of Music presented him with a bust by Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A.; and the teaching staff with his portrait by Mr. C. W. Furse. Other portraits of him were painted by Henry Philips, Mr. H. A. Olivier, and Mr. Felix Moscheles. A George Grove memorial scholarship has been founded at the Royal College of Music.

Grove married, in 1851, Harriet, daughter of the Rev. Charles Bradley [q. v.], who survives him.

[Musical Times, October 1897, containing a biographical sketch by the present writer, the information for which was verbally supplied by Grove, and Musical Times, July 1900; Musical World, 24 and 31 July 1880; Brit. Mus. Cat.; information from Lady Grove.]

F. G. E.

GROVE, Sir WILLIAM ROBERT (1811–1896), man of science and judge, only son of John Grove, magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for Glamorganshire, by his wife Anne, born Bevan, was born at Swansea on 11 July 1811. He was educated under private tutors, and at the university of Oxford, where he matriculated from Brasenose College on 6 Feb. 1829, graduated B.A. in 1832, proceeded M.A. in 1835, and was created D.C.L. in 1875. He received the degree of LL.D. from the university of Cambridge in 1879. On 11 Nov. 1831 he was admitted student at Lincoln's Inn, and was there called to the bar on 23 Nov. 1835. His professional course was retarded by ill-health, and the respite thus gained enabled him to follow his natural bent towards scientific investigation. In 1835 he became a member of the Royal Institution, of which in 1844 he was elected vice-president. The invention in 1839 of a gas voltaic battery, since known as the Grove battery, brought him into notice, and on 26 Nov. 1840 he was elected F.R.S. In the same year he was appointed to the chair of experimental philosophy in the London Institution, which he retained until 1847. He proved an unusually active member of the Royal Society, both by his contributions to its 'Transactions,' and by the leading part which he took in its reconstitution in 1847, in which year he was awarded the royal medal for his paper 'On the Gas Voltaic Battery' (Phil. Trans. 19 June 1845), and his Bakerian lecture 'On certain Phenomena of Voltaic Ignition and the Decomposition of Water into its Constituent Gases by Heat' (ib. 19 Nov. 1846). This tribute, however, did but crown a reputation already European. A professorial lecture 'On the Progress of Science since the Foundation of the London Institution,' delivered in January 1842, and printed for private circulation, contained the germ of the grand generalisation which, as developed in a subsequent course of lectures published in 1846 under the title 'The Correlation of Physical Forces' (London, 8vo), reduced the apparent plurality of forces to virtual unity by demonstrating their mutual convertibility, thus anticipating by a year the essay of Helmholtz on the same subject. The 'Correlation of Physical Forces' has passed through six editions and been translated into French (1866). The sixth English edition (1874) gathers together the more important of Grove's minor contributions to science, including in particular the Bakerian lecture, a paper 'On the Electro-chemical Polarity of Gases,' read before the Royal Society on 1 April 1852, another 'On the Striae seen in the Electrical Discharge in Vacuo,' reprinted from the 'Philosophical Magazine ' for July 1855, and an address on 'Continuity,' delivered by him as president of the British Association in 1866, Other papers by Grove will be found in 'Notices of the Proceedings of the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution,' vols. i–xii.

Grove's scientific eminence brought him briefs in patent cases, and, as his health improved, he threw his main energies into his practice. He took silk in 1803, and for some years had a lead on the South Wales and Chester circuits. In 1856 he appeared for the defence in the great Rugeley murder case [see Palmer, William, 1824–1856]. He