Stephen Gray (scientist)
| Stephen Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1666 Canterbury, Kent, England |
| Died |
7 February 1736 (aged 69) London, England |
| Residence | England |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields |
Chemistry astronomy |
| Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Academic advisors |
Roger Cotes John Theophilus Desaguliers |
| Known for |
Being the 'father' of electricity Electrical conductivity |
| Influences | John Flamsteed |
| Notable awards | Copley medal (1731, 1732) |
Stephen Gray (December 1666 – 7 February 1736) was an English dyer and astronomer who was the first to systematically experiment with electrical conduction. Until his work in 1729 the emphasis had been on the simple generation of static charges and investigations of the static phenomena (electric shocks, plasma glows, etc). He also first made the distinction between conduction and insulation, and discovered the action-at-a-distance phenomenon of electrostatic induction.
Gray was born in Canterbury, Kent and after some basic schooling, he was apprenticed to his father (and later his elder brother) in the cloth-dyeing trade. His interests lay with natural science and particularly with astronomy, and he managed to educate himself in these developing disciplines, mainly through wealthy friends in the district who gave him access to their libraries and scientific instruments. Science was very much a rich-man's hobby at this time.
He ground his own lenses and constructed his own telescope, and with this instrument he made a number of minor discoveries (mainly in the area of sunspots), gaining a reputation for accuracy in his observations. Some of his reports were published by the Royal Society through the agency of a friend Henry Hunt who was a member of the Society's secretarial staff.
Some of this material came to the notice of John Flamsteed (who was related to some Kent friends of Gray) the first English Astronomer Royal, who was building the new observatory at Greenwich. Flamsteed was attempting to construct a detailed and accurate star-map of the heavens, in the hope that this would eventually solve the problem of longitude determination for ocean navigators. Gray helped him with many of the observations and calculations (possibly without being paid).
Gray and Flamsteed became constant correspondents and friends, and this seems to have created problems for Gray in being accepted formally into the world of science. Flamsteed was involved in a prolonged dispute (more like a 'heated battle') with Sir Isaac Newton over access to preliminary star-chart data. This boiled over and became a factional war in the Royal Society, which Newton dominated (virtually excluding Flamsteed and his associates) for decades.
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