KIRWAN, RICHARD, a celebrated chemist, born in the county of Galway, in Ireland. He was originally destined to the study of the law, and, having been called to the bar, followed the profession of advocate, until some circumstances obliged him to quit it; whereupon he applied himself to the study of the natural sciences, to which his taste had always inclined him. Having established himself in London or its neighbourhood, about the year 1779, he read, at the sittings of the Royal Society of which he had become a member, several memoirs, for which, in 1781, the Copley medal was adjudged to him. Having returned to his native country about the year 1789, he was some time afterwards elected president of the Royal Irish Academy, and published several works, not only on chemistry, geology, and mineralogy, but also on metaphysics and logic. He was likewise president of the Dublin Society, and a member of the principal literary and scientific associations in Europe. He died on the 22d of June 1812, at a very advanced age. Kirwan was regarded as the Nestor of the British chemists, and almost all the natural sciences have been more or less indebted to his long labours. His works are, 1. Experiments and Observations on the Specific Gravities and Attractive Powers of various Saline Substances, published in the Philosophical Transactions; 2. Elements of Mineralogy, 1784, in two vols. 8vo, translated into German by Crell; 3. An Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids, 1787; 4. An Estimate of the Temperature of Different Latitudes, 1787, in 8vo; 5. A Treatise on the Analysis of Mineral Waters, 8vo; 6. Logic, 1789, in two vols. 8vo; to which may be added, various communications to the learned societies of which he was a member. At Dublin he formed an association for the express purpose of cultivating mineralogy; and, as a geologist, he distinguished himself by advocating what has since been called the Neptunian theory of the earth, in opposition to that of Dr Hutton. (A.)