Anthony Carlisle

1768 (Stillington, England) – 1840 (London)

Carlisle deserves to be better-known. Nicholson and he discovered electrolysis after Banks had shown him Volta’s important letter. His recognition of echo-location by bats was a century ahead of its time, he was an early experimenter with winged aviation and involved (with Davy) in Wedgwood’s pioneering photographic experiments, and he helped get child labour legislated against. He studied with Hunter, was doctor to Coleridge, Nollekens and Turner, advised Southey about body-snatching, and as a close friend of Godwin’s attended the dying Wollstonecraft while also very likely being the model for Shelley’s Frankenstein.