Oliver J Lodge
Oliver J. Lodge | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | June 12, 1851 Penkhull, Staffordshire, England |
| Died | August 22, 1940 (aged 89) Wilsford cum Lake, Wiltshire, England |
| Residence | Lake, Wiltshire, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | English |
| Known for | Relativity, Aether, Philosophy of Science, Radio, Psychical research |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physicist, Inventor |
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was an English physicist, inventor, and writer. He was a pioneer of radio and wireless telegraphy, a leading advocate of the aether theory, and later a prominent figure in psychical research and spiritualism. He served as the first Principal of the University of Birmingham and was knighted in 1902.
Biography
Education
Lodge was born on 12 June 1851 in Penkhull, Staffordshire, England. He was educated at Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, before studying at the University of London, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1875 and a Doctor of Science (DSc) degree in 1877.
Career
Lodge held the post of Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics at Bedford College, London, from 1879 to 1881. In 1881 he was appointed the first Professor of Physics and Mathematics at University College Liverpool, a position he held until 1900. In 1900 he became the first Principal of the newly established University of Birmingham, serving in that role until his retirement in 1919.
Scientific contributions
Lodge is notable for his work on the aether, a now deprecated theory, which had been postulated as the wave-bearing medium filling all space. He transmitted radio signals on August 14, 1894, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford University,[6] one year before Marconi but one year after Tesla. Lodge improved Edouard Branly's coherer radio wave detector by adding a "trembler" which dislodged clumped filings, thus restoring the device's sensitivity. He held patents on "syntonic" (tuning) methods for wireless telegraphy, which the Marconi Company purchased in 1912. Lodge also carried out scientific investigations on lightning, the source of the electromotive force in the voltaic cell, electrolysis, and the application of electricity to the dispersal of fog and smoke.
Psychical research
Lodge is also remembered for his studies of life after death. He first began to study psychical phenomena (chiefly telepathy) in the late 1880s. After his son, Raymond, was killed in World War I in 1915, Lodge visited several psychics and wrote about the experience in a number of books, including the best-selling "Raymond, or Life and Death" (1916). Altogether, he wrote more than 40 books, about the afterlife, aether, relativity, and electromagnetic theory.
Honors
- Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), 1887
- Rumford Medal of the Royal Society, 1898
- Honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD), University of Glasgow, 1901
- Knight Bachelor, 1902
- Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1919
- Faraday Medal, 1932
Dissident Works:
- The Ether of Space, 1909.
- Ether and Reality: A Series of Discourses on the Many Fuctions of the Ether of Space, 1925. (German trans. Der ?ther und die Wirklichkeit, 1928.)
- Relativity: A Very Elementary Exposition, 1925.
- A Century's Progress in Science, 1927.
- Beyond Physics: Or, The Idealisation of Mechanism, 1930.
- Past Years, 1931.
- My Philosophy, 1933.
Books
- 1930/1931 - "Beyond Physics: Or, The Idealisation of Mechanism" (Read in full)
- 1926 - "Relativity: A Very Elementary Exposition" (Read in full)
- 1925/1930/2006 - "Ether & Reality: A Series of Discourses on the Many Fuctions of the Ether of Space" (Read in full)
- 1909/2003/2007 - "The Ether of Space" (Read in full)
External links
- Oliver Lodge at Wikipedia