William Hyde Wollaston was born in East…

William Hyde Wollaston was born in East Dereham, Norfolk, the son of the priest-astronomer Francis Wollaston (1737–1815) and his wife Althea Hyde.

Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, William had obtained a doctorate in medicine from Cambridge University in 1793 and has been a fellow of his college from 1787.

During his studies, he had become interested in chemistry, crystallography, metallurgy and physics.

He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793.

The mineral wollastonite is named after him.

Leaving medicine in 1801, he has concentrated on pursuing these interests instead of his trained vocation.

In the same year, he had performed an experiment showing that the electricity from friction was identical to that produced by voltaic piles.

(During the last years of his life he will perform electrical experiments that will pave the way to the eventual design of the electric motor.

His optical work is important as well, where he is remembered for his observations of dark Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum (1802) which eventually led to the discovery of the elements in the Sun.

Due to Wollaston's influence, the existence of columbium is temporarily denied.

Heinrich Rose will prove in 1846 that columbium and tantalum are indeed different elements, and rename columbium "niobium".