John James Waterston
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John James Waterston (1811 – 18 June 1883) was a Scottish physicist and a neglected pioneer of the kinetic theory of gases.
Early life
Waterston's father, George, was an Edinburgh sealing wax manufacturer and stationer, a relative of the Sandeman family Robert and his brother, George. John was born, the sixth of nine children, into a family alive with interests in literature, science and music. He was educated at Edinburgh High School before becoming apprenticed as a civil engineer to Messrs. Grainger and Miller. His employers encouraged him to attend lectures at the University of Edinburgh. He studied mathematics and physics under Sir John Leslie as well as attending lectures in chemistry, anatomy and surgery and becoming an active participant in the student literary society.
At age nineteen, Waterston published a paper proposing a
Waterston moved to London at age twenty-one, where he worked as a railroad
Kinetic theory
Building on his theory of the mechanical explanation of gravity, he was the first to develop the kinetic theory, independently of earlier and equally neglected partial accounts by Daniel Bernoulli and John Herapath. He published it, at his own expense, in his book Thoughts on the Mental Functions (1843). He correctly derived all the consequences of the premise that gas pressure is a function of the number of molecules per unit volume, N; molecular mass, M; and molecular mean-squared velocity, . He established the relationship:
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He had been motivated to think of a wave theory of heat by analogy with the
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The publication made little impact, perhaps because of the title. He submitted his theory, under Beaufort's sponsorship, to the
Unable to retrieve a copy of his paper (he had failed to make a copy for himself before submitting the paper to the Royal Society), he rewrote the work and sought to advertise it elsewhere, attracting little attention other than from
Later life
He returned to Edinburgh in 1857 to pursue his own novel physical ideas but met with unyielding neglect and discouragement from the scientific establishment. Neglect was exacerbated by his own increasing reclusiveness and hostility to the learned societies. He worked on acoustics, astronomy, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics.
In 1858, 27 years after he published his theory of the mechanical explanation of gravity and 15 years after publishing the kinetic theory, he continued to push for others to explore his ideas on gravity without much avail.[2]
He left his Edinburgh home on 18 June and drowned in a nearby canal, possibly falling into the canal due to heat stress from his astronomical observation activities.[3]
Recognition after death
As discussed above, Waterston's paper submitted to the Royal Society was rejected. Some years after Waterston's death,
Rayleigh felt that Waterston's case was not an aberration, but the norm:[4]
"The history of [Waterston's] paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matter of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further, and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited, and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights."
See also
- John Herapath, another contemporaneous English physicist who also worked on the kinetic theory, and whose work was also neglected at the time
References
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- ^ "How Astronomers Die, a presentation by Historian Thomas Hockey". Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
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Bibliography
- J.J. Waterston, "On the physics of media that are composed of free and perfectly elastic molecules in a state of motion", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, vol. 183 (1892), pp. 1–79. (Note: Waterston died in 1883 and his paper was published some years after his death.)
- Haldane, J. S. (ed.) (1928) The Collected Scientific Papers of John James Waterston, including a biography by Haldane.
- Brush, S. G. (1957) "The development of the kinetic theory of gases: II. Waterston", Annals of Science, vol. 13, pp275–282
- - (1961) "John James Waterston and the kinetic theory of gases", American Scientist, vol. 49, pp202–214
- Daub, E. E. (1970) "Waterston, Rankine and Clausius on the kinetic theory of gases", Isis vol. 61, pp105–106