|
Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS ((ドイツ語:Reichsgraf von Rumford); March 26, 1753 – August 21, 1814) was an American-born British physicist〔"Sir Benjamin Thompson, count von Rumford". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 01 Jul. 2014 ==Early years== Thompson was born in rural Woburn, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1753; his birthplace is preserved as a museum. He was educated mainly at the village school, although he sometimes walked to Cambridge near ten miles distant with the older Loammi Baldwin to attend lectures by Professor John Winthrop of Harvard College. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to John Appleton, a merchant of nearby Salem. Thompson excelled at his trade, and coming in contact with refined and well educated people for the first time, adopted many of their characteristics including an interest in science. While recuperating in Woburn in 1769 from an injury, Thompson conducted experiments concerning the nature of heat and began to correspond with Loammi Baldwin and others about them. Later that year he worked for a few months for a Boston shopkeeper and then apprenticed himself briefly, and unsuccessfully, to a doctor in Woburn. Thompson's prospects were dim in 1772 but in that year they changed abruptly. He met, charmed and married a rich and well-connected heiress named Sarah Rolfe (née Walker). Her father was a minister, and her late husband left her property at Concord, New Hampshire, then called Rumford. They moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and through his wife's influence with the governor, he was appointed a major in the New Hampshire Militia. When the American Revolution began Thompson was a man of property and standing in New England and was opposed to the uprising. He was active in recruiting loyalists to fight the rebels. This earned him the enmity of the popular party, and a mob attacked Thompson's house. He fled to the British lines, abandoning his wife, as it turned out, permanently. Thompson was welcomed by the British to whom he gave valuable information about the American forces, and became an advisor to both General Gage and Lord George Germain. While working with the British armies in America he conducted experiments to measure the force of gunpowder, the results of which were widely acclaimed when published in 1781 in the ''Philosophical Transactions'' of the Royal Society. On the strength of this he arrived in London at the end of the war with a reputation as a scientist. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Benjamin Thompson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|