William Vernon Harcourt : pioneer glass scientist and founder of the British Association

William Venables Vernon Harcourt was appointed a Canon at York Minster, whilst his father was Archbishop, and was also Rector of a neighbouring country parish for most of his adult life. However, from his early years he had been interest in chemistry and his contacts whilst a student of classics at Oxford left him with lifelong passions for both chemistry and geology. As a result he was, in 1822, one of the founders of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. When it succeeded he took a very prominent role in founding the British Association, which was inaugurated at a meeting in York in 1831, and William Harcourt was its first secretary. He was also a keen experimental scientist and had a laboratory at his home. He became interested in glasses and their optical properties at an early stage; seeing that the lack of a good high temperature furnace was a major obstacle to such studies, he invented a suitable furnace fired by hydrogen produced by the reaction of sulphuric acid with zinc. With this furnace he eventually produced at least 166 different glasses of many different types, many of which were supplied to G.G. Stokes for optical investigations. Harcourt was the first person deliberately to introduce no fewer than fourteen of the elements into glasses and he thus deserves an honoured place in the history of glass science and technology