William Harcourt (politician) William Harcourt (politician) Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, KC (14 October 1827 – 1 October 1904) was a British lawyer, journalist and Liberal statesman. He served as Member of Parliament for various constituencies and held the offices of Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Ewart Gladstone before becoming Leader of the Opposition. A talented speaker in parliament, he was sometimes regarded as aloof and possessing only an intellectual involvement in his causes. He failed to engender much emotional response in the public and became only a reluctant and disillusioned leader of his party. Harcourt was
William Vernon Harcourt (scientist) The first meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at York in September 1831, and the general plan of its proceedings, and the laws to govern it, were drawn up by Harcourt, who was appointed general secretary. At the Birmingham meeting of the association in 1839, Harcourt was elected president. The subject of his address was the history of the composition of water, supporting the claims of Cavendish to the discovery by original documents, and resolutely vindicating the claims of science to entire freedom of inquiry. Another subject to which Harcourt directed his inquiries was