Everything about William Gilbert totally explained
William Gilbert, also known as Gilbard (
Colchester,
England,
May 24,
1544 –
London,
England,
November 30,
1603) was an English physician and a natural philosopher. He was an early
Copernican, and passionately rejected both the prevailing
Aristotelian philosophy and the Scholastic method of university teaching. After gaining his MD from Cambridge in 1569, and a short spell as bursar of
St John's College, Cambridge, he left for practice in London and in 1600 was elected President of the
College of Physicians (not by that point granted a royal charter). From 1601 until his death in 1603, he was
Elizabeth I's own physician, and
James VI and I renewed his appointment.
Scientifically, Gilbert is known for his investigations of
magnetism and
electricity. Gilbert is credited as one of the originators of the term
electricity, and many regard him as the father of
electrical engineering or father of
electricity.
His primary work was
De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (
On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth) published in
1600. In this work he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the
terrella. From his experiments, he concluded that the
Earth was itself
magnetic and that this was the reason
compasses pointed north (previously, some believed that it was the pole star (
Polaris) or a large magnetic island on the north pole that attracted the compass).
The English word
electricity was first used in 1646 by
Sir Thomas Browne, derived from Gilbert's 1600
New Latin electricus, meaning "like amber". The term was in use since the 1200s, but Gilbert was the first to use it to mean "like amber in its attractive properties". He recognized that friction with these objects removed a so-called
effluvium, which would cause the attraction effect in returning to the object, though he didn't realize that this substance (
electric charge) was universal to all materials.
In his book, he also studied
static electricity using
amber; amber is called
elektron in Greek, so Gilbert decided to call its effect the
electric force.
Like others of his day, he believed that "crystal" (
quartz) was an especially hard form of
water, formed from compressed
ice:
James Clerk Maxwell to show that both effects were aspects of a single force: electromagnetism. Even then, Maxwell simply surmised this in his
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism after much analysis. By keeping clarity, Gilbert's strong distinction advanced science for nearly 250 years.
Gilbert's
magnetism was the invisible force that many other natural philosophers, such as
Kepler, seized upon, incorrectly, as governing the motions that they observed. While not attributing magnetism to attraction among the stars, Gilbert pointed out the motion of the skies were due to earth's rotation, and not the rotation of the spheres, 20 years before
Galileo (see external reference below).
A unit of
magnetomotive force, also known as
magnetic potential, was named the
gilbert in his honor.
Gilbert died on
November 30,
1603. His cause of death is thought to have been the
bubonic plague.
Whilst today he's generally referred to as
William Gilbert, he also went under the name of
William Gilberd. The latter was used in his and his father's epitaph, the records of the town of Colchester, the Biographical Memoir in
De Magnete, and the name of The
Gilberd School in Colchester, named after Gilbert.
Further Information
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