A Gallery of Electromagnetic Personalities 4...

Faraday

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was born in a village near London. His father was a migrant blacksmith often ill and incapable of providing for his four children. Faraday's great opportunity came when he was offered a ticket to attend chemical lectures by Sir Humphrey Davy in London. Faraday went and sent a bound copy of his notes to Davy asking for employment. Faraday began as Davy's laboratory assistant. It has been said that Faraday was Davy's greatest discovery. Faraday became the greatest experimentalist in electricity and magnetism of the 19th century. He produced an apparatus that was the first electric motor and in 1831 he succeeded in showing that a magnet could induce electricity. Queen Victoria rewarded his lifetime of achievement by granting him the use of a house at Hampton Court and a knighthood. Faraday accepted the cottage but rejected the knighthood. Photos: Faraday's experiments.

Henry, Lenz

Joseph Henry (1799-1878) was a professor in a small school in Albany, New York. He was the first man in the United States since Franklin to undertake

original scientific experiments. He worked to improve electromagnets and was the first to superimpose coils of wire wrapped on an iron core. It is said that he insulated the wire for one of his magnets using a silk dress belonging to his wife. In 1830 he observed electromagnetic induction, a year before Faraday. He was roundly criticized for not publishing his discovery, losing the distinction for American science. Henry did obtain priority for the discovery of self induction, however. He received an appointment at New Jersey College (later Princeton University) and in 1846 became the first director of the Smithsonian Institution. Photo: Henry's coils. Heinrich F.E. Lenz (1804-1865), born in the old university city of Tartu, Estonia (then in Russia), was a professor at the University of St. Petersburg who carried out many experiments following the initiatives of Faraday. He is memorialized by the law which bears his name - the electrodynamic action of an induced current equally opposes the machanical inducing action- which was later recognized to be an expression of the conservation of energy. His early life is not documented but it is thought that he originally studied for the priesthood.

A Gallery of Electromagnetic Personalities 5...

Morse, Siemens, Kelvin

Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872), the son of a distinguished clergyman and geographer, mortified his parents when he pursued a career as an artist. He heard a conversation about the newly discovered electromagnet in 1832 aboard ship while returning

from Europe. He conceived the electric telegraph and made the first working model in 1835. Morse had a lifelong career as a professor of art. One of his paintings recently sold for more than a million dollars. Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892) joined the Prussian artillery at seventeen to get the training in engineering that his family could not afford. While in prison for acting as a second in a duel he began chemistry experiments that led to his invention of the first electroplating system. In 1837 he saw an early telegraph and began inventing improvements, playing an important role in the development of early telegraphic systems. In 1888, Siemens was raised to the nobility and the "von" added to his name. His younger brother, Wilhelm, (later Sir William) was also a famous engineer who moved to England and founded the company which bears the family name. Oddly, it is not certain for which brother the unit of conductance is named. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907), son of a mathematics professor at the University of Glasgow, entered the University at age ten, published his first scientific paper when he was sixteen, and was named professor of physics at age twenty-two. He remained at Glasgow for fifty-three years. Thomson is most famous for his work in thermodynamics, but his theoretical analysis of cable transmission and his inventions (18541858) made the transatlantic cable possible and brought him great wealth and a knighthood. During the late 1860's he was involved in a famous controversy against the supporters of Darwin. In 1892 he was raised to the peerage.

Joule, Kirchhoff, Stokes

James Prescott Joule (1818-1889), born into a well-to-do family prominent in the brewery industry, studied at

Manchester under Dalton. At age twenty-one he published the "I-squared-R" law which bears his name. Two years later, he published the first determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat. He became a collaborator with Thomson and they discovered that the temperature of an expanding gas falls. The "JouleThomson effect" was the basis for the large refrigeration plants constructed in the 19th century (but not used by the British brewery industry). Joule was a patient, methodical and devoted scientist; it became known that he had taken a thermometer with him on his honeymoon and spent time attempting to measure water temperature differences at the tops and bottoms of waterfalls. Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824-1887), German physicist,announced the laws which allow calculation of the currents, voltages, and resistances of electrical networks in 1845 when he was only twenty-one. In further studies he demonstrated that current flows through a conductor at the speed of light. His other work established the technique of spectrum analysis which he applied to determine the composition of the Sun. George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) was a British physicist and mathematician famous for a basic theorem of vector analysis. He worked on fluorescence and studied ultraviolet light. Stokes was the first to suggest the reason for the Fraunhofer lines but later disclaimed any prior discovery when Kirchhoff published the explanation. He was the first man since Newton to hold the three positions of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, secretary, and then president of the Royal Society. Stokes, active in the Evangelical movement, was also president of the Victorian Society, founded to respond to Darwin's "Origin of Species". Stokes was knighted and created a baronet in 1889.

A Gallery of Electromagnetic Personalities 6...

Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) came from a middle class Edinburgh family. He is ranked with Newton and Einstein for the fundamental nature of his many contributions to physics. Most importantly, he originated the concept of electromagnetic radiation and his field equations (1873) led to Einstein's special theory of relativity, It is ironic that when in 1860 the University of Aberdeen was formed by a merger between King's College and Marischal College where he held a post, Maxwell was "redundant". He applied at the University of Edinburgh, but was turned down in favor of another. He found it necessary to move to London's King's College. In 1871, Maxwell was appointed the first Cavendish professor of experimental physics at Cambridge. Maxwell died at forty-nine after a short illness. He was buried in Scotland in the family plot; there were no public honors at his passing.

Rayleigh, Poynting

John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) (1842-1919), who was in ill health for much of his youth and childhood, worked in a private laboratory he had constructed on his estate. He is most famous for his discovery of Argon and his work in acoustics, but he also contributed to electromagnetic theory. He worked

on the precision determination of electrical standards and his work on the scattering of light explained the blue color of the sky. John Henry Poynting (1852-1914), one of Maxwell's students, was a professor of physics at Mason Science College, now the University of Birmingham, England. In 1884-1885 he published papers which showed that energy flow can be expressed in a simple formula using the electric and magnetic fields.

Bell, Edison

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was a Scottish-born American audiologist whose family had been recognized for generations as leading authorities in elocution and speech therapy. He is famous for his 1876 invention of the telephone. He became wealthy and quite portly, moved to Novia Scotia, and declared himself to be sick of the telephone. Photo: An early Bell telephone. Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) is the archetype of Yankee ingenuity. He played a critical role in the beginning of the age of electricity. His laboratories produced the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, a revolutionary electric generator, the first commercial electric light and power system, key elements of motion-picture apparatus, etc. He was owner or co-owner of a record 1,093 patents. Photo: Edison's first commercial electric light bulb.

A Gallery of Electromagnetic Personalities 7...

Tesla, Westinghouse, Steinmetz

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) came to the U.S. from AustriaHungary as a young engineer. Tesla held more than 700 patents. His inventions included the principle of the rotating magnetic field machine,the induction motor, polyphase alternating-current systems, the Tesla coil transformer, wireless communication, radio, and fluorescent lights. Tesla first worked for Edison, but his enthusiasm for ac led to his leaving; he worked at odd jobs (including ditch-digging) for two years before he was hired by Westinghouse. Tesla was an eccentric with a phobia about germs, but he helped allay public fears about electricity by demonstrations in which he allowed currents to pass through his body to ignite flames. Photo: Tesla's $500M induction motor. George Westinghouse (1846-1914) was the inventor and industrialist who fought for the adoption of ac electric power in the U. S. Westinghouse purchased transformers and an ac generator in Europe and set up an ac power system in Pittsburgh. He bought Tesla's ac motor patents and hired Tesla to adapt the motor for use in his power system. Edison and the proponents of dc power claimed that ac was a menace to human life and to support their argument they arranged for the use of a standard Westinghouse ac generator as the means of execution in New York. Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923) arrived in the US in 1889 as a political refugee from Germany. Physically deformed (a diminutive hunchback), he was nearly denied admission to this country. His work at GE on hysteresis loss, ac circuit theory, and high power discharges provided the basis for the progress in ac circuits at the turn of thecentury.

Hertz, Marconi, Popov

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1847-1894) was the first to broadcast and receive radio waves. Maxwell's theory had been based on unusual mechanical ideas about the ether and had not been universally accepted. In 1884, Hertz rederived Maxwell's equations by a new method, casting them in modern form. Then, between 1885 and 1889, as a professor of physics at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, he produced electromagnetic waves in the laboratory and measured their wavelength and velocity. He showed that the nature of their reflection and refraction was the same as those of light, confirming that light waves are electromagnetic radiation obeying the Maxwell equations. Photo: Hertz's first radiator. Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was an Italian physicist who obtained a patent for a successful system of radio telegraphy (1896) at age twenty-two and remained a leader in radio technology for four decades. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. Marconi's great triumph was in 1901 when he succeeded in receiving signals transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean despite the general opinion that the curvature of the Earth would limit the range of communication by electromagnetic waves. This sensational achievement was the start of the vast development of radio communication and broadcasting. Listen to Marconi describing his result! (369K .wav file) Next: Photos: Marconi's transmitters. Aleksandr Stepanovich Popov (1859-1906) is acclaimed in Russia as the inventor of radio. Popov was the son of a village priest and planned to enter the priesthood, but his interests changed to mathematics and then to electrical engineering. He became an instructor at the Russian Navy's Torpedo School. Learning of Hertz's work, in 1895 Popov constructed an apparatus that could register electrical disturbances due to lightning, and then suggested that it could be used for receiving man-made signals. In 1896, he demonstrated the

transmission of radio wave signals between different parts of the University of St. Petersburg. Because there is evidence that Marconi demonstrated the transmission of intelligible signals even earlier however, Marconi's priority is usually conceded outside Russia.

A Gallery of Electromagnetic Personalities 8...

Michelson, Morley

Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) was a Germanborn U.S. physicist who established the speed of light as a fundamental constant. He received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1878 Michelson began work on the passion of his life, the measurement of the speed of light. His attempt to measure the effect of the earth's velocity through the supposed ether laid the basis for the theory of relativity. Edward Williams Morley (1838-1923) was an American chemist whose reputation as a skilled experimenter attracted the attentionof Michelson. In 1887 the pair performed what has come to be known as the Michelson-Morley experiment to measure the motion of the earth through the ether.

Heaviside, Lorentz, FitzGerald

Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925), described as "a short, redheaded Englishman of autocratic disposition," was a telegrapher, but deafness forced him to retire and devote himself to investigations of electricity. He became an eccentric recluse, befriended by FitzGerald and (by correspondence) by Hertz. In 1892 he introduced the operational calculus (Laplace transforms) to study transient currents in networks and theoretical aspects of problems in electrical transmission. In 1902, after wireless telegraphy proved effective over long distances, Heaviside theorized that a conducting layer of the atmosphere existed that allows radio waves to follow the Earth's curvature. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928), a professor of physics at the University of Leiden, sought to explain the origin of light by the oscillations of charged particles inside atoms. Under this assumption, a strong magnetic field would effect the wavelength. The observation of this effect by his pupil, Zeeman, won a Nobel prize for 1902 for the pair. However, the Lorentz theory could not explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Influenced by the proposal of Fitzgerald, Lorentz arrived at the formulas known as the Lorentz transformations to describe the relation of mass, length and time for a moving body. These equations form the basis for Einstein's special theory of relativity. George Francis FitzGerald (1851-1901), a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, was the first to suggest that an oscillating electric current would produce radio waves, laying the basis for wireless telegraphy. In 1892 FitzGerald suggested that the results of the MichelsonMorley experiment could be explained by the contraction of a body along its its direction of motion.

Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the great geniuses of physics, grew up in Munich where his father and his uncle had a small electrical plant and engineering works. Einstein's special theory of relativity, first printed in 1905 with the title "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" had its beginnings in an essay Einstein wrote at age sixteen. The special theory is often regarded as the capstone of classical electrodynamic theory. Return to Taylor's Ohm Page http://www.ee.umd.edu/~taylor/welcome.html