George Frederick Charles Searle


George Frederick Charles Searle FRS was a British physicist and teacher.

Biography

Searle was born in Oakington, Cambridgeshire, England.
As a child, he knew Clerk Maxwell, whom he considered to be a humorous individual. In 1888 he began work at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. Thomson, and ended up working with the lab for 55 years. After World War II, he ran the undergraduate labs. His equipment, used to calibrate the Ohm, with Thompson about 1900, was still being used in the undergraduate lab.

Contributions to science

Searle is known for his work on the velocity dependence of the electromagnetic mass. This was a direct predecessor of Einstein's theory of special relativity, when several people were investigating the change of mass with velocity. Following the work of Oliver Heaviside, he defined the expression Heaviside ellipsoid, which means that the electrostatic field is contracted in the line of motion. Those developments, when modified, were ultimately important for the development of special relativity.

Personal life

Searle was married to Alice Mary Edwards. He contracted a disease at the beginning of World War I, was cured, and became a Christian Scientist. He was a keen cyclist and travelled about proselytizing.