Higgins, William (1763–1825)

Irish chemist who wrote about the existence of atoms and the attractions between them. His theories were published almost twenty years before John Dalton's ground-breaking work on atomic weights. Higgins helped to bring down the erroneous theory of phlogiston, a substance thought to be released when material burns.

Higgins was born in Colloney, County Sligo, and was apprenticed to his wealthy uncle, a London doctor, before going to Oxford in 1786. In 1789, at the age of 26, he published the book which would establish his name, The Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories. In it Higgins was dismissive of the idea of phlogiston, instead suggesting the existence of atoms.

However, he did little more with his ideas until Dalton set out his atomic theory in A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), after which Higgins fought an unsuccessful battle claiming that he had been first with the proposition.