A Scottish doctor and later professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh for 33 years. Unusually, he lectured in English rather than Latin, which was the normal practice at the time. His lectures involving many experiments were particularly popular and became a fashionable habit of Edinburgh society. James Watt was one of his students, to whom he gave both money and ideas for his research. Black’s work was largely on specific and latent heats. He distinguished between heat and temperature, found specific heats by the method of mixtures, and obtained the latent heat of water as it froze. He founded the first Chemical Society for his students.