Maple, William (d. 1762), chemist and one of the founding members of the Dublin Society, was born outside Ireland. He was middle-aged by the time he appears in Dublin in summer 1711 when he began his long association with the Trinity College Dublin (TCD) laboratory shortly before its formal opening in August 1711; from February 1718 he was the laboratory’s operator in chemistry. He was close to and acted as operator for Richard Helsham (qv), the TCD professor of natural and experimental philosophy. In 1745 he resigned as TCD’s operator in chemistry to become chemist to the Lying-in hospital.
Also very much a man of business, in 1713 he became a member of Dublin’s guild of merchants by ‘grace especial’, meaning he had no previous connection to the trade. He appears during 1716–7 serving on Dublin’s Corporation’s audit committee and on its committee of directors for the Ballast Office (which had responsibility for Dublin Port). From 1747 to 1750 he also represented the merchant’s guild on the corporation’s common council. At TCD in 1723–5 he was contractor, jointly with Charles Brooking, for building five of the nine houses in the new ranges on the north and west sides of Library Square. He made purchases on behalf of the library in the early to mid-1730s, and at about the same time he bought fire engines for the College. In 1736 he was agent for the second Viscount Allen, a connection that likely explained his appointment in 1754 as sovereign of Carysfort borough in Co. Wicklow. The keeper of the parliament house from 1735 to 1755, earning a yearly salary of £70, later rising to £110, at some point he became stamper of cards and dice, which was paying £40 a year when he resigned in 1742. He acted as agent for the sale and leasing of properties in Dublin and further afield, while buying, leasing and leasing out property on his own account. He lived initially at Fishamble Street, Dublin, but resided in St Kevin’s Port, Dublin, from the early 1740s.
In 1723 he gave evidence in parliament as to the quality of the copper in William Wood's halfpence. Later, he petitioned parliament regarding a method he had discovered for tanning leather by the root of a native plant, septfoil (Tormentilla erecta), instead of bark. This technique had been known to the ancient Irish and other peoples, but Maple's scientific experiments proved that it would be useful to the declining tanning industry of eighteenth-century Ireland, then suffering from a shortage of oak bark. Helsham wore shoes made of the leather for five months to test its durability. In recognition of this work, Maple was presented with a grant of £200 from the Irish parliament (January 1728), and he published a pamphlet, A method of tanning without bark (1729).
The oldest of the fourteen gentlemen who met in the rooms of the Philosophical Society in June 1731 to establish ‘the Dublin Society for improving husbandry, manufactures, and other useful arts’, he took a leading role in the society and acted as registrar and curator from 1731 until his death in 1762, and as honorary secretary 1751–62. He secured accommodation in the vaults of the parliament house for the society's growing collection of agricultural implements and models. This opened in February 1733, and is believed to be the first museum of agricultural implements in Ireland or Britain. Through his influence as keeper of the parliament house, the society was allowed for some years to hold its meetings in a room in that building.
In December 1736 Maple, along with Thomas Prior (qv), began publicising the Dublin Society by publishing researches in the Dublin Newsletter. These publications emphasised the practical benefits of the Society's work, and promoted science as the handmaiden of industrial progress and self-sufficiency. Maple contributed articles on the linen industry and on improved methods of cultivating flax. His communications to the Dublin Newsletter were collected and published in The Dublin Society's weekly observations for the advancement of agriculture and manufactures (1756).
In hopes of promoting the country's glassmaking industry, he conducted experiments (October 1738) on the composition of the stones of the Giant's Causeway; Arthur Dobbs (qv) had informed Thomas Prior that the stones, when sufficiently heated, turned to glass. The results of the trials were not sufficiently encouraging to cause exploitation of the site. He was involved in the glassworks established in Dublin at Bachelor’s Quay in 1730; the venture failed in the early 1740s.
In 1760 Maple was presented with a gold medal from the Society in recognition of his work. His wife Mary predeceased him in 1749, and they do not seem to have had any surviving children, as he bequeathed the greater part of his modest fortune to his niece, Mrs Frances Potter. He died 12 January 1762 in his house at St Kevin’s Port at an advanced age after ‘a painful life of labour’ (will, quoted by de Vere White, 10); some reports say he was 101, and some say ninety-one. He was buried in St Kevin’s Old Churchyard, (now St Kevin's Park), Camden Row, Dublin, where his memorial stone still stands, stating that he died aged 104. A bust of him by Patrick Cunningham is on display in the member’s corridor of the Royal Dublin Society headquarters in Ballsbridge, Dublin.