William Archibald Cadell FRS

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

FGS MWS (1775–1855) was a Scottish industrialist and mathematician, also known as a travel writer.

Life

The eldest son of William Cadell the younger, son of William Cadell, the original managing partner and one of the founders of the Carron Iron Works, by his wife Katherine, daughter of Archibald Inglis of Auchendinny in

Midlothian Midlothian (; gd, Meadhan Lodainn) is a historic county, registration county, lieutenancy area and one of 32 council areas of Scotland used for local government. Midlothian lies in the east-central Lowlands, bordering the City of Edinburgh, ...

, he was born at his father's residence, Carron Park, near

Falkirk Falkirk ( gd, An Eaglais Bhreac, sco, Fawkirk) is a large town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow. Falkirk had a ...

, on 27 June 1775. From 1787 he owned shares in an iron syndicate, transferred from his ironmaster uncle Thomas Edington, but at this point he was a nominee for his father. After studying at Edinburgh University, he became, about 1798, a member of the Scottish bar. He did not practise the law, however, having private means and the estate of Banton in Stirlingshire. He was involved in businesses, in the coal and paper sectors as well as iron, but only as a financier. He trained as an advocate at Edinburgh University, qualifying in 1798, but never practiced, relying instead on his inheritances. Cadell spent his time in scientific and antiquarian research at home and abroad. While travelling on the European continent during the Napoleonic Wars, he was taken prisoner in 1802, and held captive for some years. On escaping he pretended to be a Frenchman on the basis of his knowledge of French. He was back in Scotland in 1809. A friend of Sir Joseph Banks, Cadell was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 28 June 1810. He was also a fellow of the

Geological Society The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

, a member of the Wernerian Natural History Society, and a fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. Cadell died unmarried at Edinburgh on 19 February 1866. He is buried in Warriston Cemetery. The grave was re-exposed during works by the Friends of Warriston Cemetery in 2017 and lies against the southern wall of the main cemetery, backing onto the Water of Leith Walkway.

Works

In the ''Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh'' Cadell published a paper "On the Lines that divide each Semidiurnal Arc into Six Equal Parts"; in the ''Annals of Philosophy'' he wrote an "Account of an Arithmetical Machine lately discovered in the College Library of Edinburgh". He wrote up some travels in ''A Journey in Carniola, Italy, and France in the years 1817, 1818'', 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1820.

Family

He never married and had no children. He was the great uncle of the geologist

Henry Cadell Dr Henry Moubray Cadell of Grange, DL FRSE LLD (1860 – 10 April 1934) was a Scottish geologist and geographer, noted for his work on the Moine Thrust, the oil-shale fields of West Lothian, and his experiments in mountain building publishe ...

Notes

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Cadell, William Archibald 1775 births 1855 deaths Scottish industrialists Scottish mathematicians Scottish travel writers Fellows of the Royal Society People from Falkirk Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 18th-century Scottish businesspeople 19th-century Scottish businesspeople