William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire returned for North Derbyshire. He succeeded his grandfather in the earldom of Burlington in 1834 and entered the House of Lords. In 1858 he also succeeded his cousin as Duke of Devonshire. He was Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire from 1857 to 1891 and Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire from 1858 to 1891. Devonshire was Chancellor of the University of London from 1836 to 1856, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1861 to 1891, and Chancellor of the Victoria University from 1880 to 1891. At Cambridge he endowed the Cavendish Professorship of Physics, and the building of the Cavendish Laboratory. He made vast
Cavendish Laboratory new chemistry building with the Department of Chemistry (led by Lord Todd) in Lensfield Road: both chemistry departments merged in the 1980s. In World War II the laboratory carried out research for the MAUD Committee, part of the British Tube Alloys project of research into the atomic bomb. Researchers included Nicholas Kemmer, Alan Nunn May, Anthony French, Samuel Curran and the French scientists including Lew Kowarski and Hans von Halban. Several transferred to Canada in 1943; the Montreal Laboratory and some later to the Chalk River Laboratories. The production of plutonium and neptunium by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons was predicted