Francis Hauksbee

Francis Hauksbee the Elder (1660–1713), also known as Francis Hawksbee, was an 18th-century English scientist best known for his work on electricity and electrostatic repulsion.

Biography

Francis Hauksbee was the son of draper and common councillor Richard Hauksbee and his wife Mary. He was baptized on 27 May 1660 in the parish of St Mary-at-the-Walls, Colchester. He was the fifth of five sons. In 1673 Hauksbee entered Colchester Royal Grammar School. From 1678 to at least 1685 he apprenticed as a draper in the City of London, initially to his eldest brother. He was married no later than May 1687, when a daughter was born. Five of his eight children survived infancy. From 1687 to 1703, he may have run his own drapery shop. From at least March 1701, he lived at Giltspur Street, where he made air-pumps and pneumatic engines.

The transition from drapery to scientific instrumentation and experimentation is not well documented. Historians have had to speculate about the events that lead to Hauksbee engagement with the Royal Society. Hauksbee became Isaac Newton's lab assistant. He became a member of the Royal Society on 30 November 1703. On 15 December 1703, he made his first experimental demonstration to the Society (a new air-pump and the phenomenon of ‘mercurial phosphorus,’ a kind of electrostatic discharge). This was also the first meeting chaired by Isaac Newton,

who had just become president of the Society, and wished to resurrect the Royal Society's weekly demonstrations.

Hauksbee was an instrument maker and appointed as chief experimentalist of the Royal Society.