Sir David BrewsterKHPRSEFRSFSA ScotFSSAMICE (11 December 1781–10 February 1868) was a Scottish scientist, inventor, author, and academic administrator. In science he is principally remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, mostly concerned with the study of the polarization of light and including the discovery of Brewster's angle. He studied the birefringence of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity,[2] thereby creating the field of optical mineralogy.[3] For this work, William Whewell dubbed him the "father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of optics."[4]
A pioneer in photography, Brewster invented an improved stereoscope,[5] which he called "lenticular stereoscope" and which became the first portable 3D-viewing device.[6] He also invented the stereoscopic camera,[7][8] two types of polarimeters,[9] the polyzonal lens, the lighthouse illuminator,[10] and the kaleidoscope.
Brewster was a devout Presbyterian and marched arm-in-arm with his brother during the events of the Disruption of 1843, which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland.[11] As a historian of science, Brewster focused on the life and work of his hero, Isaac Newton. Brewster published a detailed biography of Newton in 1831 and later became the first scientific historian to examine many of the papers in Newton's Nachlass. Brewster also wrote numerous works of popular science,[12] and was one of the founders of the British Science Association,[13][14] of which he was elected President in 1849. He became the public face of higher education in Scotland, serving as Principal of the University of St Andrews (1837–1859) and later of the University of Edinburgh (1859–1868). Brewster also edited the 18-volume Edinburgh Encyclopædia.
Life
David Brewster was born in the Canongate in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, to Margaret Key (1753–1790) and James Brewster (c. 1735–1815), the rector of Jedburgh Grammar School and a teacher of high reputation.[15] David was the third of six children, two daughters and four sons: James (1777–1847), minister at Craig, Ferryden; David; George (1784–1855), minister at Scoonie, Fife; and Patrick (1788–1859), minister at the abbey church, Paisley.[3]
Though Brewster duly finished his theological studies and was licensed to preach, his other interests distracted him from the duties of his profession. In 1799 fellow-student Henry Brougham persuaded him to study the diffraction of light. The results of his investigations were communicated from time to time in papers to the Philosophical Transactions of London and other scientific journals. The fact that other scientists – notably Étienne-Louis Malus and Augustin Fresnel – were pursuing the same investigations contemporaneously in France does not invalidate Brewster's claim to independent discovery, even though in one or two cases the priority must be assigned to others.[17] A lesser-known classmate of his, Thomas Dick, also went on to become a popular astronomical writer.
The most important subjects of his inquiries can be enumerated under the following five headings:
The discovery of the polarising structure induced by heat and pressure;
The discovery of crystals with two axes of double refraction, and many of the laws of their phenomena, including the connection between optical structure and crystalline forms;
The laws of metallic reflection;
Experiments on the absorption of light.
In this line of investigation, the prime importance belongs to the discovery of
the connection between the refractive index and the polarizing angle;
biaxial crystals, and
the production of double refraction by irregular heating.
Inner picture of a cigar box from the early 1900s with a portrait of Brewster.
Among the non-scientific public, his fame spread more effectually by his invention in about 1815 of the kaleidoscope, for which there was a great demand in both the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.[17] As a reflection of this fame, Brewster portrait was later printed in some cigar boxes. Brewster chose renowned achromatic lens developer Philip Carpenter as the sole manufacturer of the kaleidoscope in 1817. Although Brewster patented the kaleidoscope in 1817 (GB 4136),[19][20] a copy of the prototype was shown to London opticians and copied before the patent was granted. As a consequence, the kaleidoscope became produced in large numbers, but yielded no direct financial benefits to Brewster.[21][22][23] It proved to be a massive success with two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes sold in London and Paris in just three months.[24]
The Brewster stereoscope, 1849.
An instrument of more significance, the stereoscope, which – though of much later date (1849) – along with the kaleidoscope did more than anything else to popularise his name, was not as has often been asserted the invention of Brewster. Sir Charles Wheatstone discovered its principle and applied it as early as 1838 to the construction of a cumbersome but effective instrument, in which the binocular pictures were made to combine by means of mirrors.[17] A dogged rival of Wheatstone's, Brewster was unwilling to credit him with the invention, however, and proposed that the true author of the stereoscope was a Mr. Elliot, a "Teacher of Mathematics" from Edinburgh, who, according to Brewster, had conceived of the principles as early as 1823 and had constructed a lensless and mirrorless prototype in 1839, through which one could view drawn landscape transparencies, since photography had yet to be invented.[25] Brewster's personal contribution was the suggestion to use prisms for uniting the dissimilar pictures; and accordingly the lenticular stereoscope may fairly be said to be his invention.
A much more valuable and practical result of Brewster's optical researches was the improvement of the British lighthouse system. Although Fresnel, who had also the satisfaction of being the first to put it into operation, perfected the dioptric apparatus independently, Brewster was active earlier in the field than Fresnel, describing the dioptric apparatus in 1812. Brewster pressed its adoption on those in authority at least as early as 1820, two years before Fresnel suggested it, and it was finally introduced into lighthouses mainly through Brewster's persistent efforts.[17]
Other work
Treatise on new philosophical instruments for various purposes in the arts and sciences, 1813
Although Brewster's own discoveries were important, they were not his only service to science. He began writing in 1799 as a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Magazine,[26] of which he acted as editor 1802–1803 at the age of twenty.[27] In 1807, he undertook the editorship of the newly projected Edinburgh Encyclopædia, of which the first part appeared in 1808, and the last not until 1830. The work was strongest in the scientific department, and many of its most valuable articles were from the pen of the editor. At a later period he was one of the leading contributors to the Encyclopædia Britannica (seventh and eighth editions) writing, among others, the articles on electricity, hydrodynamics, magnetism, microscope, optics, stereoscope, and voltaic electricity. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1816.[28]
In 1819 Brewster undertook further editorial work by establishing, in conjunction with Robert Jameson (1774–1854), the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which took the place of the Edinburgh Magazine. The first ten volumes (1819–1824) were published under the joint editorship of Brewster and Jameson, the remaining four volumes (1825–1826) being edited by Jameson alone. After parting company with Jameson, Brewster started the Edinburgh Journal of Science in 1824, 16 volumes of which appeared under his editorship during the years 1824–1832, with very many articles from his own pen.
He contributed around three hundred papers[3] to the transactions of various learned societies, and few of his contemporaries wrote as much for the various reviews. In the North British Review alone, seventy-five articles of his appeared. A list of his larger separate works will be found below. Special mention, however, must be made of the most important of them all: his biography of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1831 he published the Life of Sir Isaac Newton,[29] a short popular account of the philosopher's life, in Murray's Family Library, followed by an 1832 American edition in Harper's Family Library;[30] but it was not until 1855 that he was able to issue the much fuller Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, a work which embodied the results of more than 20 years' investigation of original manuscripts and other available sources.[31][32]
Brewster's position as editor brought him into frequent contact with the most eminent scientific men, and he was naturally among the first to recognise the benefit that would accrue from regular communication among those in the field of science. In a review of Charles Babbage's book Decline of Science in England in John Murray's Quarterly Review, he suggested the creation of "an association of our nobility, clergy, gentry and philosophers".[33] This was taken up by various Declinarians and found speedy realisation in the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Its first meeting was held at York in 1831; and Brewster, along with Babbage and Sir John Herschel, had the chief part in shaping its constitution.[31]
In the same year in which the British Association held its first meeting, Brewster received the honour of knighthood and the decoration of the Royal Guelphic Order. In 1838, he was appointed principal of the united colleges of St Salvator and St Leonard, University of St Andrews. In 1849, he acted as president of the British Association and was elected one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France in succession to J. J. Berzelius; and ten years later, he accepted the office of principal of the University of Edinburgh, the duties of which he discharged until within a few months of his death.[31] In 1855, the government of France made him an Officier de la Légion d'honneur.
He was a close friend of William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the calotype process, who sent Brewster early examples of his work. It was Brewster who suggested Talbot only patent his process in England, initiating the development of early photography in Scotland and eventually allowing for the formation of the first photographic society in the world, the Edinburgh Calotype Club, in 1843.[3] Brewster was a prominent member of the club until its dissolution sometime in the mid-1850s; however, his interest in photography continued, and he was elected the first President of the Photographic Society of Scotland when it was founded in 1856.[34]
Of a high-strung and nervous temperament, Brewster was somewhat irritable in matters of controversy; but he was repeatedly subjected to serious provocation. He was a man of highly honourable and fervently religious character. In estimating his place among scientific discoverers, the chief thing to be borne in mind is that his genius was not characteristically mathematical. His method was empirical, and the laws that he established were generally the result of repeated experiment. To the ultimate explanation of the phenomena with which he dealt he contributed nothing, and it is noteworthy although he did not maintain to the end of his life the corpuscular theory he never explicitly adopted the wave theory of light. Few would dispute the verdict of James David Forbes, an editor of the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica: "His scientific glory is different in kind from that of Young and Fresnel; but the discoverer of the law of polarization of biaxial crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age." In addition to the various works of Brewster already mentioned, the following may be added: Notes and Introduction to Carlyle's translation of Legendre's Elements of Geometry (1824); Treatise on Optics (1831); Letters on Natural Magic, addressed to Sir Walter Scott (1832)The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841); More Worlds than One (1854).[31]
In his Treatise he demonstrated that vegetal colors were related with the absorption spectra[35] and he described for the first time the red fluorescence of chlorophyll.
History of Scottish Freemasonry
As well as his many scientific works and biographies of notable scientists, Brewster also wrote The History of Free Masonry, Drawn from Authentic Sources of Information; with an Account of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, from Its Institution in 1736, to the Present Time,[36] published in 1804, when he was only 23. The work was commissioned by Alexander Lawrie, publisher to the Grand Lodge of Scotland, to whom the work has been, frequently, mis-attributed. Given that the book bears Lawrie's name and not Brewster's this is understandable. The book became one of the standard works on early Scottish freemasonry although it has been largely superseded by later works. There is no evidence that Brewster was a Freemason at the time he wrote the book, nor any that he became one later.[37]
Opposition to evolution
Brewster's Christian beliefs stirred him to respond against the idea of the transmutation of species and the theory of evolution. His opinion was that "science and religion must be one since each dealt with Truth, which had only one and the same Author."[38] In 1845 he wrote a highly critical review of the evolutionist work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, in the North British Review.[39] which he considered to be an insult to Christian revelation and a dangerous example of materialism.
In 1862, he responded to Darwin's On the Origin of Species and published the article The Facts and Fancies of Mr Darwin in Good Words. He stated that Darwin's book combined both "interesting facts and idle fancies" which made up a "dangerous and degrading speculation". He accepted adaptive changes, but he strongly opposed Darwin's statement about the primordial form, which he considered an offensive idea to "both the naturalist and the Christian."[40]
Family
Calvert Jones, Lady Brewster (Jane Kirk Purnell), Mrs. Jones, David Brewster and Miss Parnell (seated)
Brewster married twice. His first wife, Juliet Macpherson (c. 1776–1850), was a daughter of James Macpherson (1736–1796), a probable translator of Ossian poems. They married on 31 July 1810 in Edinburgh and had four sons and a daughter:[41]
David Edward Brewster (17 August 1815 –) became a military officer (Lieutenant Colonel) serving in India.[42][43]
Henry Craigie (1816–1905) became a military officer and photographer.[42][44]
Margaret Maria Gordon (1823–1907) wrote a book on Brewster,[45] which is considered the most comprehensive description of his life.
Brewster married a second time in Nice, on 26 (or 27) March 1857, to Jane Kirk Purnell (b. 1827), the second daughter of Thomas Purnell of Scarborough.[46] Lady Brewster famously fainted at the Oxford evolution debate of 30 June 1860. Brewster died in 1868, and was buried at Melrose Abbey, next to his first wife and second son.[3][47] The physics building at Heriot-Watt University is named in his honour.
Recognition and modern references
Street sign in Kings Buildings, Edinburgh to the memory of David Brewster
Brewster's views on the possibility of evolution of intelligence on other planets, contrasted with the opinion of William Whewell, are cited in the novel Barchester Towers.[48]
He appears as a minor antagonist in the 2015 video game Assassin's Creed Syndicate as a scientist working for the game's opposing faction.[49] He is assassinated by one of the protagonists, Evie Frye.[50][51]
Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century. He is perhaps better known for inventing the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) Fresnel lens and for pioneering the use of "stepped" lenses to extend the visibility of lighthouses, saving countless lives at sea. The simpler dioptric stepped lens, first proposed by Count Buffon and independently reinvented by Fresnel, is used in screen magnifiers and in condenser lenses for overhead projectors.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus.
A kaleidoscope is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when viewed from the other end, due to repeated reflection. These reflectors are usually enclosed in a tube, often containing on one end a cell with loose, colored pieces of glass or other transparent materials to be reflected into the viewed pattern. Rotation of the cell causes motion of the materials, resulting in an ever-changing view being presented.
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.
Brewster's angle is an angle of incidence at which light with a particular polarization is perfectly transmitted through a transparent dielectric surface, with no reflection. When unpolarized light is incident at this angle, the light that is reflected from the surface is therefore perfectly polarized. This special angle of incidence is named after the Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781–1868).
Thomas Young FRS was a British polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He was instrumental in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically the Rosetta Stone.
Timeline of electromagnetism and classical optics lists, within the history of electromagnetism, the associated theories, technology, and events.
A Fresnel lens is a type of composite compact lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections.
Étienne-Louis Malus was a French officer, engineer, physicist, and mathematician.
A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image.
Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a book by English natural philosopher Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704. The book analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Opticks was Newton's second major book on physical science and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution. Newton's name did not appear on the title page of the first edition of Opticks.
Baden Powell, MA FRS FRGS was an English mathematician and Church of England priest. He held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at the University of Oxford from 1827 to 1860. Powell was a prominent liberal theologian who put forward advanced ideas about evolution.
James Ferguson was a Scottish astronomer. He is known as the inventor and improver of astronomical and other scientific apparatus, as a striking instance of self education and as an itinerant lecturer.
The Keith Medal was a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society's scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathematics or earth sciences.
Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, followed by theories on light and vision developed by ancient Greek philosophers, and the development of geometrical optics in the Greco-Roman world. The word optics is derived from the Greek term τα ὀπτικά meaning 'appearance, look'. Optics was significantly reformed by the developments in the medieval Islamic world, such as the beginnings of physical and physiological optics, and then significantly advanced in early modern Europe, where diffractive optics began. These earlier studies on optics are now known as "classical optics". The term "modern optics" refers to areas of optical research that largely developed in the 20th century, such as wave optics and quantum optics.
In optics, the corpuscular theory of light states that light is made up of small discrete particles called "corpuscles" which travel in a straight line with a finite velocity and possess impetus. This was based on an alternate description of atomism of the time period.
A Fresnel rhomb is an optical prism that introduces a 90° phase difference between two perpendicular components of polarization, by means of two total internal reflections. If the incident beam is linearly polarized at 45° to the plane of incidence and reflection, the emerging beam is circularly polarized, and vice versa. If the incident beam is linearly polarized at some other inclination, the emerging beam is elliptically polarized with one principal axis in the plane of reflection, and vice versa.
Humphrey Lloyd FRS FRSE MRIA (1800–1881) was an Irish physicist. He was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (1831-1843) and much later Provost (1867–1881). Lloyd is known for experimentally verifying conical refraction, a theoretical prediction made by William Rowan Hamilton about the way light is bent when travelling through a biaxial crystal. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of both the British Association and the Royal Irish Academy.
Treatise on Light: In Which Are Explained the Causes of That Which Occurs in Reflection & Refraction is a book written by Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens that was published in French in 1690. The book describes Huygens's conception of the nature of light propagation which makes it possible to explain the laws of geometrical optics shown in Descartes's Dioptrique, which Huygens aimed to replace.
↑ Thomas J. Bress (2009), "The Influence of Processing and Fluid Parameters on Injection Molding Flow". University of Michigan. ISBN1-109-11089-8. p. 14.
1 2 3 4 5 A. D. Morrison-Low (2004) "Brewster, Sir David (1781–1868)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biographydoi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3371
↑ International Stereoscopic Union (2006) "Stereoscopy", Numbers 65–72, p. 18. "In 1849 Scottish scientist Sir David Brewster invents the lenticular stereoscope, the first practical, portable, 3D viewing device. This stereoscope used refractive lenses and began the protocol of having the stereo pairs mounted side by side."
↑ In the words of the Round Table Journal (1868): "Sir David Brewster...did more, probably, than has been done by any other one man for the popularization of science." H. E. and C. H. Sweeter, p. 124
↑ "The BAAS: Origins and Beginnings". Archived from the original on 12 December 2013. Retrieved 16 January 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). baas.research.glam.ac.uk
↑ Bayard Quincy Morgan; Alexander Rudolf Hohlfeld (1959). German Literature in British Magazines, 1750–1860. University of Wisconsin Press. Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany ... 1785 . ... Merged with Scots Magazine in 1804. Ed . by James Sibbald till 1792; by Robert Anderson till 1802; by Sir David Brewster till 1803.
↑ "Discovery of gravitation, A.D. 1666" by Sir David Brewster, in The Great Events by Famous Historians, Rossiter Johnson, LL.D. Editor-in-Chief, Volume XII, pp. 51–65, The National Alumni, 1905.
↑ Charles Robert Cross (1848–1921, ed); William Ripley Nichols; John Trowbridge (1843–1923, ed); Samuel Kneeland; George Bliss; David Ames Wells (1854). Year-book of Facts in Science and Art. Sir David Brewster had several years before discovered a remarkable phenomenon in an alcoholic solution of the green coloring matter of leaves, or, as it is called by chemists, chlorophyll
Brewster, David (1854). The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian. Murray (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN978-1-108-00416-9)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
