Anthony Carlisle

Sir Anthony Carlisle was a British surgeon, born February 15, 1768 in Stillington, County Durham and died November 2, 1840 in London, remembered in the history of energy for a landmark chemistry experiment performed alongside his own medical career. Appointed surgeon at Westminster Hospital in 1793, a post he held for 47 years, he partnered in 1800 with the chemist William Nicholson to pass a current from a newly built voltaic pile through water, decomposing it into hydrogen and oxygen gas in what is credited as the first deliberate electrolysis of water, the founding demonstration behind every later method of producing hydrogen as an energy carrier. Carlisle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804 and delivered its Croonian Lecture that year and again in 1805 and 1807, was knighted by George IV in 1821, and served two terms as president of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1828 and again in 1837.