Richard Glazebrook
British physicist (1854-1935)
Sir Richard Tetley Glazebrook (18 September 1854 – 15 December 1935) was an English physicist.
Education and early career
Glazebrook was born in West Derby, Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of a surgeon. He was educated at Dulwich College until 1870, Liverpool College from 1870 to 1872, and Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated in Mathematics in 1876 and of which he was elected a fellow in 1877. He studied physics under James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Rayleigh at the new Cavendish Laboratory and, in 1880, was appointed a demonstrator at the laboratory.
The following year (1881), he was also appointed a college lecturer in mathematics and physics and a university lecturer in mathematics. His research focused on electrical standards and aviation. When defining electrical standards for the unit of resistance, the British Science Association were trying to determine what length a mercury column should be, to express the absolute value of the Ohm. A number of different values had been obtained over the years and Glazebrook determined the value at 106.3 cm.
Despite skepticism of mercurial standards this was the International value agreed on later by the 1893 Chicago conference.
Later career
He hoped to succeed Rayleigh as Cavendish Professor of Physics in 1884, but was surprisingly (given that he was also Rayleigh's choice) passed over in favour of Sir J.J. Thomson, which was a great disappointment to him.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Glazebrook” 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.