George Frederick Charles Searle

Professor at Cambridge?

Searle, George Frederick Charles (1864–1954), physicist, was born on 3 December 1864 at Oakington, Cambridgeshire, eldest of the three sons and two daughters of William George Searle (1829–1913), vicar of Oakington, and his wife, Harriet Susan, formerly Theobald. Searle attended the village school for only six days. After this his father, a former mathematician and linguist, took over his son's education in the usual subjects, plus the Hebrew language. ...

George Frederick Charles Searle Born 3 December 1864 Oakington Died 16 December 1954 (aged 90) Alma mater University of Cambridge[citation needed] Spouse(s) Alice Mary Edwards[citation needed] Awards FRS[1] Scientific career Institutions Cavendish Laboratory George Frederick Charles Searle FRS[1] (3 December 1864 – 16 December 1954) was a British physicist and teacher.[2]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Contributions to science 3 Personal life 4 Bibliography 5 References 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.

Contributions to science Searle 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.

Personal life Searle was married to 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.

Searle was the author of papers and books, including:

Experimental elasticity (1908) Cambridge Univ. Press Experimental harmonic motion A Manual for the Laboratory, 1st edition (1915) 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) References

Thomson, George (1955). "George Frederick Charles Searle 1864-1954". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 1: 246–252. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1955.0018. JSTOR 769255.

Searle, G. F. C. (1896). "On the Steady Motion of an Electrified Ellipsoid". Proceedings of the Physical Society of London. 15: 264. doi:10.1088/1478-7814/15/1/323.