Silvanus P. Thompson (1851-1916)
Silvanus P. Thompson was born in York, where his father served as a master at the Quaker Bootham School. In 1873 Silvanus Thompson was made the science master at the School. On 11 February 1876 he heard Sir William Crookes give an evening discourse at the Royal Institution on The Mechanical Action of Light, with demonstrations of a radiometer, which inspired him to an interest in light and optics. His other main interest was in electromagnetism. In 1876 he was appointed as a lecturer in physics at University College, Bristol, where in 1878 he became a full professor at the age of 27.
He made a series of European tours to investigate the provision of technical education. In 1879 he gave a paper at the Royal Society of Arts on Apprenticeship, Scientific and Unscientific in which he detailed the deficiencies of technical education in England. Thompson recognised that technical education was the means by which scientific knowledge could be put into action He was to spend the rest of his life putting his vision into practical realisation.
In 1878 the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education was founded. Finsbury Technical College was a teaching institution of the City and Guilds and it was as its Principal and Professor of Physics that Thompson was to spend the next thirty years. In 1907 the City and Guilds merged with other institutions in the foundation of Imperial College, University of London.
Thompson’s keynote speech to Manchester Conference of Friends in 1895 was entitled Can a scientific man be a sincere Friend? In it he put forward the thesis that Quakerism, with its testimony of truth and its emphasis on the Inner Light, could find a natural ally in scientific research. This conference came to be seen as the most significant development of British Quakerism towards the modern liberal view. He was deeply committed to Quaker testimony of truth in all aspects and the title of his 1915 Swarthmore Lecture delivered to the Society of Friends was The Quest for Truth (Lib. Ref. 059.15 THO).
Silvanus Thompson’s own scientific library of historical and working books is preserved at the Institution of Engineering and Technology. It includes many rare books on electricity, magnetism and optics. His papers are preserved at the archives of Imperial College.
