William Gilbert

From Exampleproblems

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
See rationale on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
(Tagged September 2005)

For other people named William Gilbert, see William Gilbert (disambiguation)

Image:William Gilbert.jpg

William Gilbert

William Gilbert (or William Gylberde) born May 24, 1544, Colchester, England and died November 30, 1603, probably in London. English physician to Elizabeth I and James I and scientific researcher into magnetism and electricity. He is the originator of the name "electricity".

His primary work was De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on That Great Magnet the Earth) published in 1600. In this work he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the terrella. From the experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and that this was reason compasses point north (previously, it was believed that it was the Polaris or a large magnetic island on the north pole that attracted the compass). In his book, he also studied static electricity using amber; amber is called elektron in Greek, so Gilbert decided to call it electricity.