Sir William Hamilton was the third duke of Hamilton. He was born in 1730 at Scotland and died in 1803. In 1761 he was elected member of parliament for Midhurst, and in 1764 he received the appointment of ambassador to the court of Naples. He devoted his leisure to science, making observations on Vesuvius, Etna, and other volcanic mountains; and the resultsof his researches are detailed in the Philosophical Transactions, and in his Campi Phlegraei, or Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies (published in Naples, between 1776 and 1779, in three volumes). He took an active part in the excavation of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and collected a cabinet of antiquities, of which an account was published by D'Hancarville, in a splendid work with finely-coloured plates. Sir William Hamilton's second wife was the notorious Lady Emma Hamilton. Research William Hamilton
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