George Mathews Whipple
English physicist
George Mathews Whipple (15 September 1842 – 8 February 1893), was a British physicist who was superintendent of the Kew Observatory.
Early life
He was born at Teddington where both his father, George Whipple, and mother were teachers. He attended Kingston Grammar School, a private school run by Dr Williams in Richmond and King's College London, where he obtained his BSc in 1871.
Career
He joined the staff at the Kew Observatory in 1858, became magnetic assistant in 1862, chief assistant in 1863, and superintendent in 1876. He was responsible for the testing of magnetographs before being distributed abroad. The Observatory also tested barometers, thermometers, anemometers, telescopes, chronometers, watches, photographic lenses, etc.
He prepared the magnetic section of the report on the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. He carried out pendulum experiments for determining the constant of gravitation with Captain William James Heaviside of the Indian Survey in 1873, with Colonel John Herschel of the Royal Engineers in 1881, and with General James Thomas Walker in 1888.
Whipple was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Meteorological Society and the Physical Society. He would give talks on various subjects, such as "the weather, how can it be fortold".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q18527665. VIAF identifies the subject as 59865120. The Library of Congress control number is n87136945. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842, 1893, 1871 and 1858.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Mathews Whipple” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.