Gooday, Graeme J. N. (Author)
The extraordinary career of the British Quaker polymath, Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851–1916), encompassed fame in physics, electrical engineering, mathematics, history of science, educational method, painting, music, textbooks, X-rays, popular lectures, the promotion of women's rights, book-collecting, and not least his leadership in encouraging fellow Quakers to embrace the challenging results of research in the natural sciences. His public-facing career, with a reputation that ranged across Western Europe at least, centred on the sincere yet critical communication of new technical and historical knowledge, in a mastery of four languages. Yet his kaleidoscopic work has not received any sustained historical examination since the Life and Letters produced by his widow Jane and daughter Helen in 1920. The centenary of his death was marked by an interdisciplinary workshop at the Westminster (Quaker) Meeting-House, “‘A Many-sided Crystal’: The Quaker Physicist and Electrical Engineer Silvanus Phillips Thompson” on September 16, 2016. This spotlight section of Centaurus captures four of the revised contributions to that event, and these cover Thompson's contributions to historical theory, biographical practice, and commercial technology, as just a few elements of the rich and complex legacy that emerged posthumously from his multifarious, polymathic talents. These collectively point us to a revised view of Thompson as a pre-First World War European figure who gained his authority not from specialization in a single area of esoteric research, but from a life of public service that integrated the literary arts and historical writing with sciences and engineering, all incorporated within an active Quaker practice. The papers in this collection thus show how Thompson came to be an historian of science with an unprecedented mastery of contemporaneous techno-scientific arts and sophisticated skills in historical-biographical writing, working harmoniously in a secular world with a rigorous yet non-dogmatic faith.
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Article
Graeme Gooday;
(2021)
“A many-sided crystal”: Understanding the manifold legacy of Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851–1916)
(/isis/citation/CBB696854016/)
Article
Geoffrey Cantor;
(2021)
Thompson, Biographer
(/isis/citation/CBB000247262/)
Article
Stathis Arapostathis;
Anna Guagnini;
(2021)
Living in between: The commercial side of Silvanus P. Thompson's engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB059481221/)
Chapter
Gay, Hannah;
(2004)
“If gold ruste what shall iren do?” Silvanus Phillips Thompson, Quakerism and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000471153/)
Article
Gay, Hannah;
(2010)
Chemist, Entomologist, Darwinian, and Man of Affairs: Raphael Meldola and the Making of a Scientific Career
(/isis/citation/CBB000953439/)
Article
Matthew Stanley;
(2021)
No slaves to words: S. P. Thompson's theory of history
(/isis/citation/CBB681886550/)
Article
Stanley, Matthew;
(2003)
“An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War”: The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer
(/isis/citation/CBB000340621/)
Article
Gay, Hannah;
Barrett, Anne;
(2002)
Should the Cobbler Stick to His Last? Silvanus Phillips Thompson and the Making of a Scientific Career
(/isis/citation/CBB000202577/)
Chapter
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2004)
Friends of Science? The Role of Science in Quaker Periodicals
(/isis/citation/CBB000450154/)
Book
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2005)
Quakers, Jews, and Science: Religious Responses to Modernity and the Sciences in Britain, 1650--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000610236/)
Book
Channon, Geoffrey;
(2001)
Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940: Studies in Economic and Business History
(/isis/citation/CBB000101604/)
Thesis
Thorsheim, Peter Joseph;
(2000)
Inventing air pollution: The social construction of smoke in Britain, 1880-1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001560983/)
Article
Arapostathis, Stathis;
(2013)
Meters, Patents and Expertise(s): Knowledge Networks in the Electricity Meters Industry, 1880--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001211901/)
Article
Angela Muthana;
Roy Ellen;
(2020)
The Great Eolith Debate and the Anthropological Institute
(/isis/citation/CBB140384123/)
Article
Tagliacozzo, Eric;
(2005)
The Lit Archipelago: Coast Lighting and the Imperial Optic in Insular Southeast Asia, 1860-1910
(/isis/citation/CBB000830407/)
Book
Maxwell, Anne;
(2008)
Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001035902/)
Article
Jones, Claire L.;
(2013)
Instruments of Medical Information: The Rise of the Medical Trade Catalog in Britain, 1750--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001213362/)
Article
Jones, Alan Victor;
(2006)
Towards Safer Working: The Hazards and the Risks of Introducing Electrical Equipment in British Coal Mines up to about 1930
(/isis/citation/CBB000700483/)
Book
Morrison-Low, A. D.;
(2010)
Northern Lights: The Age of Scottish Lighthouses
(/isis/citation/CBB001221416/)
Book
Leggett, Don;
Dunn, Richard;
(2012)
Re-Inventing the Ship: Science, Technology and the Maritime World, 1800--1918
(/isis/citation/CBB001253003/)
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