George Cadogan Morgan was a Welsh dissenting minister and scientist
Background
He was born in 1754 at Bridgend, Glamorganshire, was the second son of William Morgan, a surgeon practising in that town, by Sarah, sister of Doctor Richard Price. An intention of entering the church was abandoned, owing to the death of his father and the poverty of his family.
Education
George was educated at Cowbridge grammar school and, for a time, at Jesus College, Oxford, whence he matriculated 10 October 1771.
Career
In 1776, he settled as Unitarian minister at Norwich, where it is said that his advanced opinions exposed him to much annoyance from the clergy of the town. He was subsequently minister at Yarmouth for 1785-1786, but removed to Hackney early in 1787, and became associated with Doctor Price in starting Hackney College, where he acted as tutor until 1791. He was in Paris at the storming of the Bastille, and is supposed to have been the first to communicate the news to England.
He sympathised with the revolution in its earlier stages, and held very optimistic views as to human progress, believing that the mind could be so developed as to receive, by intuition, knowledge which is now attainable only through research.
In 1791, he was disappointed of Doctor Price"s post as preacher at the Gravel-pit meeting-house at Hackney, and retired to Southgate in Middlesex. There he undertook the education of private pupils, and met with much success.
Morgan gained a high reputation as a scientific writer, his best-known work being his Lectures on Electricity, which he had delivered to the students at Hackney. In these he foreshadowed several of the discoveries of subsequent scientific mentor
In chemistry, he was an advocate of the opinions of Stahl in opposition to those of Lavoisier, and was engaged upon a work on the subject at the time of his death.
In 1785, he communicated to the Royal Society a paper containing "Observations and Experiments on the Light of Bodies in a state of Combustion". He was also the author of "Directions for the use of a Scientific Table in the Collection and Application of Knowledge.. with a of the Author".
This contains an elaborate table for the systematisation of all knowledge.
He also made considerable progress in writing the memoirs of Doctor He died on 17 November 1798 of a fever contracted, it was supposed, while making a chemical experiment in which he inhaled some poison. Two of the sons, William Ashburner Morgan and Edward Morgan, successively became solicitors to the East India Company, while most of the others settled in America, where the eldest, Richard Price Morgan, was connected with railroad and other engineering works.