Eli Whitney Blake, Jr.

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Professor Eli Whitney Blake Jr
Eli Whitney Blake Junior

Eli Whitney Blake, Jr. (born April 20, 1836 in New Haven , Connecticut , † January 10, 1895 in Hampton , Connecticut) was an American physicist .

academic career

His father was Eli Whitney Blake, Sr. , the inventor of the steam-powered stone crusher , and the great-nephew of Eli Whitney , the inventor of the egrenizing machine . His mother was Eliza Maria O'Brian, the great-granddaughter of Rev. James Pierpont , one of the founders of Yale University. He had eleven siblings, five of whom were brothers, four of whom were also studying at Yale, and six sisters.

Eli Whitney Jr. also showed an early interest in experimentation: as a child he lost a few finger joints while experimenting with gunpowder.

He graduated from Yale in 1857, then taught for a year at a private school in Unionville , Connecticut , before continuing his studies, first at the Sheffield Scientific School in New Haven, then three and a half years in Germany, where he studied with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav in Heidelberg Robert Kirchhoff , in Marburg with Hermann Kolbe , and in Berlin with Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and Heinrich Gustav Magnus studied chemistry, but also physics. On his return to the United States, he also taught these two subjects pro tempore from 1866 to 1867 at the University of Vermont at Burlington. From 1868 to 1869 he was professor of physics at Columbia College in New York and from 1869 to 1870 at the newly opened Cornell University .

In 1869, Rowland Gibson Hazard and his son Rowland Hazard donated $ 40,000 to a professorship at Brown University and, on the recommendation of President Caswell, designated Eli Whitney for a "Hazard Professorship in Physics" Blake was appointed. In 1870 he followed a call to Brown University , where he held the chair of physics until his death in 1895.

Two members of Blake's first class, juniors John J. Holbrook in 1872 and Edwin A. Herring in 1872, were inspired by his lectures to install a telegraphic line between their rooms at opposite ends of the university hall.

In 1887–1888, Arnold Grün gave the faculty the physical apparatus of a barometer, solar radiometer and hygrometer, which Professor Alexis Caswell used in his meteorological observations in 1822. In 1891 Wilson Hall was opened for the Physics Department. Whitney's lecture room was used for two University Extension courses, one in mechanics and the other in electricity, given by William D. Berg in 1891-92. With the first Ph.D. Degree in physics was awarded to Albert DeForest Palmer in 1895. The next year Otis E. Randall earned a PhD in mechanics.

Blake did research mainly on acoustics and electricity. In 1876 and 1877, shortly after Alexander Graham Bell had patented the telephone , he worked with John Peirce and William F. Channing to develop a telephone receiver that had a much higher fidelity than Bell's patented prototype.

family

Blake was married to Helen Mary Rood, with whom he had a daughter Alida Governor Blake (who married Barcley Hazard) and a son Eli Whitney Blake III. (* February 13, 1867) had. After the death of his wife in 1869, he married Elizabeth Almy Ellery Vernon on June 9, 1881, who survived him.

publication

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alida Blake Hazard: The Blakes of 77 Elm Street: A Family Sketch. Quiniipiack Press, New Haven 1925. pp. 33-34.
  2. ^ Sheffield Scientific School
  3. ^ Rowland Gibson Hazard - Rhode Island Manufacturer, Politician, and Philosopher
  4. ↑ Academic stations according to: In Memoriam - Eli Whitney Blake, LL.D. Doctor's Club, Providence, no year given, circa 1895.
  5. ↑ Alexis Caswell
  6. ^ Albert DeForest Palmer (1869-1940), professor of physics
  7. ^ Otis Everett Randall (1860-1946), professor of mechanical drawing and dean of Brown University
  8. ^ From Martha Mitchell's Encyclopedia Brunoniana
  9. ^ Encyclopedia Brunoniana
personal data
SURNAME Blake, Eli Whitney Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH New Haven , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1895
Place of death Hampton , Connecticut