George Frederick Charles Searle
George Frederick Charles Searle (3 December 1864 – 16 November 1954)[1] was a British physicist and teacher, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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[edit] Biography
Searle was born in Oakington, Cambridgeshire, England.
As a child, he knew Clerk Maxwell, whom he considered to be a humorous individual. In 1888 he began work at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. Thomson, and ended up working with the lab for 55 years. After World War II, he ran the undergraduate labs. His equipment, used to calibrate the Ohm, with Thompson about 1900, was still being used in the undergraduate lab.
[edit] Contributions to science
He is known for his work on the velocity dependence of the electromagnetic mass. This was a direct predecessor of Einstein's theory of special relativity, when several people were investigating the change of mass with velocity. Following the work of Oliver Heaviside, he defined the expression Heaviside ellipsoid, which means that the electrostatic field is contracted in the line of motion. Those developments, when modified, were ultimately important for the development of special relativity.
[edit] Personal life
Searle was married with Alice Mary Edwards. He contracted a disease at the beginning of World War I, was cured, and became a Christian Scientist. He was a keen cyclist and travelled about proselytizing.
[edit] Bibliography
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: George Frederick Charles Searle |
- Searle, George Frederick Charles (1897), "On the Steady Motion of an Electrified Ellipsoid", Philosophical Magazine, 5 44 (269): 329–341
Searle was the author of papers and books, including:
- Experimental elasticity (1908) Cambridge Univ. Press
- Experimental harmonic motion, 2nd edition (1922) Cambridge Univ. Press
- Experimental optics, 1st edition (1925) Cambridge Univ. Press
- Experimental optics, 2nd edition (1935) Cambridge Univ. Press
- Experimental physics, (1934) Cambridge Univ. Press
- Oliver Heaviside, the man (1987) C.A.M. Publishing, England (written in 1950, published posthumously)
[edit] References
- ^ Thomson, G. (1955). "George Frederick Charles Searle. 1864-1954". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1: 246–226. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1955.0018.
