Samuel Jackson Barnett (December 14, 1873 – May 22, 1956) was an American physicist. He was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Barnett was born in Woodson County, Kansas, the son of a minister. In 1894, he received a B.S. in physics from the University of Denver and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1898. From 1898 to 1918 he taught at several universities from 1918 to 1926 and joined the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, and in 1926 was a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. He worked mainly on electromagnetism, and discovered the Barnett effect. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1921.[1]
Barnett died in Pasadena, California, about a month after the death of his wife, Lelia Jefferson Harvie Barnett.