Granville Wheler

Granville Wheler was an English clergyman and scientist, born in August 1701 and dying on 12 May 1770, the third son of Sir George Wheler, a canon of Durham Cathedral. Admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1717, he took his BA in 1721, was a Fellow of Christ's from 1722 to 1724, became rector of Leake in Nottinghamshire in 1737 and prebendary of Southwell in 1753. At Otterden Place in Kent he carried out experiments into electricity with friends including John Godfrey, Thomas Ruddock and Stephen Gray, on the lines of those published by Benjamin Franklin and others, confirming Franklin's identification of lightning as an electrical discharge and investigating ways to communicate electricity along threads of various materials run through the building. He was the first in England to electrify a live animal, and after Gray died in 1736 he published his own observations in electrostatics. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1728 and was buried in Otterden church.