New developments in high‐magnetic field research

SEP 01, 1961

An article based on the Thirtieth Joseph Henry Lecture of The Philosophical Society of Washington delivered on May 12, 1961. This address is included in Volume 16 of the archival Bulletin of the Society.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3057729

Francis Bitter

Three hundred and fifty years ago, long before Newton was born, at a time when the motions of freely falling bodies were first being carefully observed and analyzed, William Gilbert, the physician of Queen Elizabeth I, was collecting facts about magnets. These he published in his famous book De Magnete. Magnets were, at the time, thought of as curios having occult and magical properties. These Gilbert reviewed, but in addition he performed a most extraordinary feat of synthesis. He collected data on the orientation of compass needles carried around the surface of the earth earth by mariners and showed that the enormously varied observations could all be described by means of one basic assumption, that the earth itself was a magnet.

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More about the authors

Francis Bitter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.