Richard Chenevix (ca. 1774 – 5 April 1830) was an Irish chemist, mineralogist and playwright who also wrote on a range of other topics. He was known for his sharp cynicism and for engaging in combative criticism. Early life and family He was born in Ballycommon, Co. Offaly, to Elizabeth Arabin and lieutenant-colonel Daniel Chenevix of the Royal Irish Artillery. His 3x great grandfather, Reverend Philip Chevenix, was a Huguenot settler who left France after Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the earlier Edict of Nantes which had given additional rights to Protestants. His great uncle Richard, and namesake, was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Waterford and Lismore. His sister, Sarah Elizabeth, married Captain Hugh Tuite of Sonna, Co. Westmeath, twice Member of Parliament for that county. On 4 June 1812 he married "an aging French beauty of dubious reputation", Countess Jeanne Francoise de Rouault (?-1836), the widow of Comte Charles de Rouault, whom he had met at the home of Sir John Sebright. Education He enrolled at Glasgow University in 1785, but did not take a degree; however, he did graduate A.B. from the University of Dublin. Career Chenevix went to Paris after his university studies. He was imprisoned there for 15 months during the Reign of Terror. While in custody he had two children; also, amongst his fellow prisoners were a number of chemists who whetted his interest in the topic. After his release he studied at three different schools in Paris, gaining skills in chemical analysis. In 1798 he wrote his first paper, in French: 'Analysis of some magnesium rocks' in Annales de Chimie. Thereafter, in journals both sides of the Channel, he reported analyses of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids, compounds of lead, copper, iron, arsenic, carbon and sulphur and crystals of corundum including sapphires and rubies. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1801 as a result of this work. He wrote a paper in England in 1802 supporting French Neologist-inspired changes to chemical nomenclature. During a year in Germany, he published criticisms of the work of ground-breaking scientists: Danish chemist and physicist Hans Christian Ørsted and the German physicist, chemist and mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss. In 1803, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, he published a paper asserting that the palladium that the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston had extracted from platinum ore the previous year (and had announced