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William Francis Magie

American physicist (1858–1943)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ8009319 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Francis Magie (1858–1943) was an American physicist, a founder of the American Physical Society (president from 1910 to 1912) and the first professor of physics at Princeton University, where he had graduated (class valedictorian, 1879) and where he served for two decades as dean of the faculty. His papers on the contact angle of liquids and solids and on the specific heat of solutions were notable, as was his text Principles of Physics. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1896).

Personal views

Magie served as the president of the Men's Anti-Suffrage League of New Jersey. In this capacity, he argued that women's suffrage would ruin the family structure, destroy gender roles, and "undermine civilization."

Selected works

Magie, William Francis, editor, translator. (1899). The Second Law of Thermodynamics at Google Books: Memoirs by Carnot, Clausius and Thomson.

Magie, William Francis. (1911). Principles of physics, designed for use as a textbook of general physics.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Francis Magie” is american physicist (1858–1943). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Francis and Magie, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1858, 1943, 1910, 1912—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1858-01-01. For this dossier, William, Francis and Magie is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american physicist (1858–1943)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8009319. VIAF identifies the subject as 23452501. The Library of Congress control number is n80152961. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1858, 1943, 1910 and 1912.

Critical limits

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Francis Magie” 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.