SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOLS: THE FIRST WAVE-- A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF RICHARD DAWES (1793-1867).

The article focuses on the contribution of professor Richard Dawes to the education of the labouring classes in the nineteenth century. Richard Dawes was a Yorkshireman, born at Hawes in upper Wensleydale. For two years prior to entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1813, his education had been at the hands of the Quaker mathematician, John Gough of Kendal. Cambridge had provided Dawes with few opportunities for teaching. The historian of Downing records that, for much of its early life, the college acted as a kind of unendowed hostel. The few students in residence almost invariably prepared for the ordinary degree of B.A. with a view to entering the Church, in which most of them probably had good prospects of advancement. During the autumn of 1847, Dawes arranged a course of six talks, illustrated by experiments, on the subject of agricultural chemistry. Since the publication in 1840 of Liebig's Chemistry of Agriculture and Physiology, followed by the author's tour of England, chemistry had become a popular science. In 1845, with a view to advancing the study of chemistry particularly in its applications to agriculture and industry, the Royal College of Chemistry was founded in London.