In science, Joseph Black (1728-1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist notable for his scientific investigations into the nature of heat, for being a mentor and financier to Scottish mechanical engineer James Watt, and for his discovery of the phenomenon of “latent heat”, calculations of which were later used by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Laplace in their 1782 invention the “ice calorimeter”, which was used to determine the heat evolved in various chemical reactions. Black’s mentor was Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen, notable for being the first, in 1757, to make diagrams of affinity reactions in chemistry. Through this interaction, both Cullen and Black arrived at the view that heat may have a significant effect on affinities. [1]

By 1761, Black had deduced that the application of heat to ice does not cause its immediate liquefaction, but rather that for a period of time the ice absorbed the heat without a rise in temperature. [3] He designated this quantity of heat absorbed by the ice by the term “latent heat”. [4] Black was one of the first chemists to adopt Lavoisier’s caloric theories and taught them as early as 1784. [2]

Publications
Joseph famously only published the following five works in his lifetime: his MD thesis (in Latin), De humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba, 1754; "Experiments upon magnesia alba, quicklime, and some other alcaline substances" in Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary, 1756; a letter to the president of the Royal Society on the subject of the effect of having boiled water on its freezing point was published in Philosophical Transactions, 1775; a letter on the temperature of mercurial congelation in Philosophical Transactions, 1783; and a paper on the analysis of some hot springs in Iceland published in The Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1794.

He was much irritated by the appearance of a pirated version of his lectures on the subject of heat which appeared anonymously as An Enquiry into the General Effects of Heat, 1770, as well as by a number of letters written by Black published by their recipients in his lifetime. A 1786 book titled Lectures on Chemistry was published, a collection of both his and his student’s views of his lectures. [5] After his death his lectures were written out from his own notes, supplemented by those of some of his pupils, and published with a biographical preface by his friend and colleague, professor John Robison (1739-1805), in 1803, as Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, delivered in the University of Edinburgh. [6] In his lectures on chemistry can be found one of the first statements of what is known as the zeroth law of thermodynamics, i.e. that heat tends to reach equilibrium among bodies.

Further reading
● Tait, Peter G. (1868). Sketch of Thermodynamics. Kessinger Publisher (gives extracts of Black’s lectures on caloric theory).

References
1. (a) Crosland, M. P. (1959). “The use of diagrams as chemical ‘equations’ in the lecture notes of William Cullen and Joseph Black.” Annals of Science, Vol 15, Num 2, June.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (pgs. 387, 392, 430, 534, 612, 655), (preview), (Google books). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
2. Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) - History of Gas Chemistry, Bruce Mattson - Creighton University.
3. Ogg, David (1965). Europe of the Ancient Regime: 1715-1783. Harper & Row.
4. Muller, Ingo. (2007). A History of Thermodynamics - the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy. New York: Springer.
5. Black, Joseph. (1786). “Lectures on Chemistry”, [URL]. Edinburgh.
6. Joseph Black - Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911.