Reginald Irvan Gray
Reginald Irvan Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 18, 1917 |
| Died | November 28, 1996 (aged 79) |
| Residence | Myrtle Beach, SC, United States |
| Nationality | English / USA |
| Known for | Electrodynamics, Experiments |
Reginald Irvan Gray, O.B.E. (18 March 1917 – 28 November 1996), was an English-born research physicist and former Royal Air Force officer who, after emigrating to the United States, worked as an experimental and theoretical physicist for the United States Navy. He is best remembered among independent-science circles for his lifelong study of classical electromagnetism in the tradition of James Clerk Maxwell, for a series of experiments probing fundamental questions such as the finite mass of the photon and the possible presence of neutrinos in the vacuum, and for his book Unified Physics (1988).
Biography
Gray served during the Second World War as a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.). He was counted among "the few," the RAF airmen of the wartime generation, and by contemporaries was described as an exceptionally modest man who seldom spoke of his wartime service.
After the war Gray emigrated to the United States, where he was employed as a physicist at a U.S. Navy laboratory. He became known within the community of independent physicists from the late 1960s onward, carrying out carefully crafted experiments—initially on his own initiative and later with some support from his laboratory. He settled in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and continued both experimental and theoretical work through his years of retirement until his death in 1996.
Scientific contributions
Gray's work centred on classical electromagnetic theory and its experimental application. He was noted for a detailed command of nineteenth-century physics, including Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism and the work of J. J. Thomson, which he combined with an interest in contemporary developments in physics.
His experiments were aimed at fundamental questions in physics, including tests for a finite rest mass of the photon and searches for evidence of neutrinos in the vacuum. In the later part of his career he pursued a unified account of electromagnetism and gravitation—which he termed "electromagnetogravitism"—set out in a series of Naval laboratory reports and in his book Unified Physics. Among his last projects was a patent application for a physical realization of the isolated Amperian current element, a long-standing theoretical construct in electrodynamics.
The physicist Thomas E. Phipps, Jr., writing in Galilean Electrodynamics, described Gray as "the foremost scholar of Maxwellian physics of our time"—one who, rather than building a reputation through published papers, "went into the lab and actively applied Maxwell's own ways of thinking and doing."
Honors
- Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.)
Books
- 1988 - "Unified Physics" (Read in full)
- 1975-ish - "A New Theory of Electromagnetism and Gravity"
- 1970 - "Electromagnetogravitism (NWL Technical Note TN-T-1/70)"