Franklin’s physics

JUL 01, 1976

“Poor Richard’s” ability to extract the heart from the matter and express it plainly, evident in his work with electricity, led to the international scientific reputation that preceded his political missions.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3023562

John L. Heilbron

Benjamin Franklin usually receives good marks for his physics from those who have taken the trouble to study it. To contemporaries he was the “Kepler of Electricity” (Volta being the Newton), the “Modern Prometheus,” the “Father of Electricity.” Among moderns, Robert Millikan credits him with the discovery of the electron and brackets him with Laplace as the two greatest scientists of the 18th century. Millikan, whose promotion of Franklin was perhaps intended to facilitate a reappraisal of the relative contributions of himself and J. J. Thomson to the investigation of electrons, went too far. But one does not have to consider Franklin a Kepler, Newton, Prometheus or Millikan to perceive that he was one of the most important natural philosophers of the Age of Reason.

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John L. Heilbron, University of California, Berkeley.