John Henry Poynting
British physicist (1852-1914)
John Henry Poynting FRS (9 September 1852 – 30 March 1914) was an English physicist. He was the first professor of physics at Mason Science College from 1880 to 1900, and then the successor institution, the University of Birmingham until his death.
Early life and education
Poynting was the youngest son of Thomas Elford Poynting, a Unitarian minister. He was born at the parsonage of the Monton Unitarian Chapel in Eccles, Lancashire, where his father served as minister from 1846 to 1878. In his boyhood, he was educated at the nearby school operated by his father. From 1867 to 1872, he attended Owens College, now the University of Manchester, where his physics teachers included Osborne Reynolds and Balfour Stewart. From 1872 to 1876 he was a student at the University of Cambridge, where he attained high honours in mathematics after taking grinds with Edward Routh.
Career
In the late 1870s, he worked in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge under James Clerk Maxwell. In 1880, he became the first professor of physics at the University of Birmingham. He was the developer and eponym of the Poynting vector, which describes the direction and magnitude of electromagnetic energy flow and is used in the Poynting theorem, a statement about energy conservation for electric and magnetic fields.
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