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)
Article
Geoffrey Cantor;
(2021)
Thompson, Biographer
Chapter
Gay, Hannah;
(2004)
“If gold ruste what shall iren do?” Silvanus Phillips Thompson, Quakerism and Science
Article
Stathis Arapostathis;
Anna Guagnini;
(2021)
Living in between: The commercial side of Silvanus P. Thompson's engineering
Article
Stanley, Matthew;
(2003)
“An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War”: The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer
Article
Gay, Hannah;
Barrett, Anne;
(2002)
Should the Cobbler Stick to His Last? Silvanus Phillips Thompson and the Making of a Scientific Career
Article
Matthew Stanley;
(2021)
No slaves to words: S. P. Thompson's theory of history
Article
Gay, Hannah;
(2010)
Chemist, Entomologist, Darwinian, and Man of Affairs: Raphael Meldola and the Making of a Scientific Career
Chapter
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2004)
Friends of Science? The Role of Science in Quaker Periodicals
Book
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2005)
Quakers, Jews, and Science: Religious Responses to Modernity and the Sciences in Britain, 1650--1900
Article
Kraemer, Sebastian;
(2010)
“The Dangers of This Atmosphere”: A Quaker Connection in the Tavistock Clinic's Development
Article
Xavier García Ferrandis;
Àlvar Martínez-Vidal;
(2019)
La ayuda humanitaria de los British Quakers durante la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939): el caso del Hospital Infantil de Polop de la Marina (Alicante)
Book
Satia, Priya;
(2018)
Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution
Thesis
Boyling, Elaine;
(2012)
Quakerism and Therapeutic Environments: Dynamic Resources in the Management of a Therapeutic Community, 1962--1995
Article
Benjamin K Sovacool;
Noam Bergman;
Debbie Hopkins;
Kirsten EH Jenkins;
Sabine Hielscher;
Andreas Goldthau;
Brent Brossmann;
(August 2020)
Imagining sustainable energy and mobility transitions: Valence, temporality, and radicalism in 38 visions of a low-carbon future
Article
Enebakk, Vidar;
(2009)
Lilley Revisited: Or Science and Society in the Twentieth Century
Article
Mayer, Anna-K.;
(2005)
When Things Don't Talk: Knowledge and Belief in the Inter-War Humanism of Charles Singer (1876--1960)
Article
Arapostathis, Stathis;
(2013)
Meters, Patents and Expertise(s): Knowledge Networks in the Electricity Meters Industry, 1880--1914
Book
Coad, J. G.;
(2011)
Support for the Fleet: British Naval Bases, 1700--1914
Book
Leggett, Don;
Dunn, Richard;
(2012)
Re-Inventing the Ship: Science, Technology and the Maritime World, 1800--1918
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