In 1804, he experimented with radiant heat using a cubical vessel filled with boiling water. One side of the cube is composed of highly polished metal, two of dull metal copper) and one side painted black. Hew showed that radiation was greatest from the black side and negligible from the polished. The apparatus is known as Leslie's cube.
SIR JOHNLESLIE (1766-1832), Scottish mathematician and physicist, was born of humble parentage at Largo, Fifeshire, on the 16th of April 1766, and received his early education there and at Leven.
In 1805 he was elected to succeed John Playfair in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh, not, however, without violent though unsuccessful opposition on the part of a narrow-minded clerical party who accused him of heresy in something he had said as to the "unsophisticated notions of mankind" about the relation of cause and effect.
Leslie's main contributions to physics were made by the help of the "differential thermometer," an instrument whose invention was contested with him by Count Rumford.
Leslie was a self-taught mathematician and physicist, diverted into the straight path of mathematics at the mature age of eleven or twelve by a gift of mathematical books from the minister of Largo.
Leslie was considered by his colleagues to be familiar with the whole field of pure science of his time.
Leslie's experimental work dealt chiefly with the laws of radiant heat, of which he says "no part of physical science appeared so dark and neglected." Great progress could be made, and was made, in the subject of Heat, even though the investigator was ignorant of its ultimate nature.
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