Everything about Count Rumford totally explained
Sir Benjamin Thompson,
Count Rumford (in
German: ),
FRS (
26 March 1753 –
21 August 1814) was an
Anglo-American physicist and
inventor whose challenges to established
physical theory were part of the
19th century revolution in
thermodynamics.
Early life in America
Thompson was born in rural
Woburn, Massachusetts, on
March 26,
1753; his
birthplace is preserved to this day as a museum. He was educated mainly at the village school, although he sometimes walked to Cambridge with the older
Loammi Baldwin to attend lectures by Professor
John Winthrop at
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, moved to
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and through his wife's influence with the governor, was appointed a major in a
New Hampshire Militia.
When the
American Revolution began, Thompson was a man of property and standing in New England, and was opposed to the rebels. 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, forever. 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 Germain.
While working with the British armies in America, he conducted experiments concerning the force of gunpowder, the results of which were widely acclaimed when eventually published, in
1781, in the
Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society. Thus, when he moved to
London at the conclusion of the war, he already had a reputation as a scientist.
Bavarian maturity
In
1785, he moved to
Bavaria where he became an
aide-de-camp to the
Prince-elector Karl Theodor. He spent eleven years in Bavaria, reorganising the army and establishing
workhouses for the poor. During his work he also invented the
Rumford Soup, a
nutritious soup for the poor, and established the cultivation of the
potato in Bavaria. He invented the wax candle to replace the smokey tallow or beef fat ones. He also founded the
Englischer Garten in Munich which remains today and is known as one of the largest urban public parks in the world.
Experiments on heat
His experiments on
gunnery and
explosives led to an interest in heat. He devised a method for measuring the
specific heats of
solids but was disappointed that
Johan Wilcke had priority.
Thompson next investigated the
insulating properties of various materials including
fur,
wool and
feathers. He correctly appreciated that the insulating properties of these natural materials arise from the fact that they inhibit the
convection of
air. He then made the somewhat reckless, and incorrect,
inference that air and, in fact, all
gases, were perfect non-
conductors of heat. He further saw this as evidence of the
argument from design, contending that
divine providence had arranged for fur on animals in such a way as to guarantee their comfort.
In
1797, he extended his claim about non-conductivity to
liquids. The idea raised considerable objections from the scientific establishment,
John Dalton and
John Leslie making particularly forthright attacks. Instrumentation far exceeding anything available in terms of
accuracy and precision would have been needed to verify Thompson's claim. Again, he seems to have been influenced by his
theological beliefs and it's likely that he wished to grant
water a privileged and providential status in the regulation of human life.
However, his most important scientific work took place in
Munich, and centred on the nature of
heat, which he contended in
An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction (
1798) wasn't the
caloric of then-current scientific thinking but a form of
motion. Though this work met with a hostile reception, it was subsequently important in establishing the laws of
conservation of energy later in the
19th century.
Inventions
Thompson was an active inventor, developing improvements for chimneys and fireplaces and inventing the double boiler, a kitchen range, and a drip coffeepot. The
Rumford fireplace is considered to be a very thermally efficient way to heat a room. The retention of heat is something of a
leitmotif, as he's also credited with the invention of
thermal underwear. Furthermore he was socially active as founder of
Munich's
Englischer Garten in
1789.
Later life
After
1799, he divided his time between
France and England. With
Sir Joseph Banks, he established the
Royal Institution of
Great Britain in 1799. The pair chose
Sir Humphry Davy as the first lecturer. He endowed the
Rumford medals of the
Royal Society and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and endowed a professorship at
Harvard University.
In
1804, he married
Marie-Anne Lavoisier, the widow of the great
French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, his American wife having died since his emigration. They soon separated, but Thompson settled in
Paris and continued his scientific work until his death on August 21, 1814.
Thompson is buried in the small cemetery of Auteuil in Paris, just across from
Adrien-Marie Legendre.
Honors
Further Information
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