WILLIAM, descended of an ancient family in Staffordshire, was born at Coton Clanford on the 26th of March 1659. His father was a private gentleman of small fortune. In 1674, the son was admitted a pensioner of Sidney College, Cambridge, where, notwithstanding several disadvantages, he acquired a great degree of reputation. In 1681, he commenced A.M., having previously been an unsuccessful candidate for a fellowship. In 1682, seeing no prospect of preferment, he became assistant to the head-master of Birmingham school. Some time after, he obtained a small lecture about two miles distant, but did the duty the whole Sunday; which, together with the business of a great free-school for about four years, began to break his constitution. During this space he likewise underwent a great deal of trouble and uneasiness, in order to extricate two of his brothers from some inconveniences to which their own imprudence had subjected them. In 1688 affairs took a new turn. He found himself, by a cousin's will, entitled to a very ample estate, and came to London that same year, where he settled, choosing a private, retired, and studious life. In 1722, he printed a few copies of his celebrated work, entitled "The Religion of Nature delineated." It was printed for sale in 1725, and so great was its success, that more than 10,000 were sold in a very few years. He had scarcely completed his treatise when he unfortunately broke his arm; and this accident adding strength to dispositions that had been growing upon him for some time, accelerated his death, which happened upon the 29th of October 1724. He was a tender, humane, and in all respects worthy man, but is represented to have had something of the irascible in his constitution and temperament. His "Religion of Nature delineated" exposed him to some censure, as if he had disparaged Christianity by laying so much stress, as he does in this work, upon the obligations of truth, reason, and virtue, and by making no mention of revealed religion. But this censure must have been the offspring of ignorance or envy, since it appears from the introduction to his work that he intended to treat of revealed religion in a second part, which he lived not to finish.

WILLIAM HYDE, was great-grandson of the preceding, and son of the Rev. Francis Wollaston, rector of Chisellhurst, and of St Vedast, Foster-lane, and precentor of St David's, who died in 1815. His father had seventeen children. William, his second son, was born on Wologda, the 6th of August 1766, and received his academical education at Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of M.D. in 1793.

He first settled as a medical practitioner at Bury St Edmund's; but meeting with little success, he removed to London, where however he was not more fortunate in his profession. The office of physician to St George's Hospital falling vacant, he was one of the candidates for the appointment; and on the election of his rival, Dr Pemberton, he was so much chagrined by his defeat, that he resolved to abandon the profession of medicine, and expressed his determination never again to write a prescription, were it even for his own father; and from this time his attention was wholly directed to natural science. Although almost every branch of science at different times engaged the attention of Dr Wollaston, chemistry was that to which he was most ardently devoted; and it is on his important discoveries in this department of natural philosophy that his reputation will chiefly rest. In pursuing his inquiries, he usually made his experiments on very small specimens of the substance which he wished to analyse. He possessed an uncommon neatness of hand, and invented the most ingenious methods of determining the properties and constituents of very minute quantities of matter. Among the delicate instruments which he was accustomed to make, was a sliding rule of chemical equivalents, and a galvanic battery of such small dimensions that it was contained in a thimble. He produced wire of platinum so extremely fine as to be almost imperceptible to the naked eye. To him we are indebted for the discovery of the malleability of platinum, a discovery which is supposed to have yielded him above £30,000; and he is likewise said to have derived great pecuniary advantages from several of his other discoveries and inventions, which, as they were generally of a practically useful nature, were calculated to produce a lucrative return.

Dr Wollaston was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1793, and second secretary on the 30th November 1806. His communications to the Philosophical Transactions were numerous and important. On the 30th November 1828, the Royal Society awarded to him one of the royal medals for his essay "On a method of rendering Platina malleable." Towards the end of 1828 he was seized with the disorder of which he died, and which was afterwards ascertained to be an effusion of blood in the ventricles of the brain. Feeling that his end was approaching, and being anxious that the knowledge of his discoveries and inventions should be preserved for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, he devoted his numbered hours, in the midst of pain and disease, to dictate such information as he thought worthy of being preserved.

At the time of his death, which occurred on the 23rd December 1828, Dr Wollaston was senior fellow of Caius College. In February 1829, Dr Fitton, as president of the Geological Society, of which Dr Wollaston was for some time one of the vice-presidents, concluded his annual address with the following encomium on this eminent individual: "It would be difficult to name a man who so well combined the qualities of an English gentleman and a philosopher, or whose life better deserves the eulogium given by the first of our orators to one of our most distinguished public characters; for it was marked by a constant wish and endeavour to be useful to mankind."