William Swan (physicist)

Not to be confused with William Francis Gray Swann.

William Swan (13 March 1818 in Edinburgh - 1 March 1894)[1] was a Scottish physicist best known for his 1856 discovery of the Swan band.[2]

In 1856, Swan applied to join the faculty at Marischal College, but was passed over in favor of James Clerk Maxwell.[3] Swan subsequently joined the Scottish Naval and Military Academy, where in 1857 he demonstrated that Fraunhofer's D-line in the spectrum of the Sun was caused by the presence of sodium;[4] in this respect, he is sometimes credited as having inspired Gustav Kirchhoff's research into the same issue.[5]

In 1859, he joined the faculty of Saint Andrews University, where he was a professor of natural philosophy until 1880.[6]

Recognition

In 1843, the Royal Scottish Society of the Arts awarded Swan a gold medal for his scientific achievements.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Swan, at the University of St Andrews; published September 5, 2009; retrieved April 17, 2013
  2. ↑ Handbook Of Optical Engineering, edited by Daniel Malacara and Brian J. Thompson; page 264; published 2001 by CRC Press
  3. ↑ James Clerk Maxwell's Scottish chair, by John S. Reid; from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A; published 28 May 2008 (doi: 10.1098/rsta.2007.2177)
  4. ↑ The Historical Development of Quantum Theory - volume 1, part 1 - The Quantum Theory of Plankc, Einstein, Bohr, and Sommerfeld: Its Foundation and the Rise of its Difficulties - 1900-1925 by Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg; page 157; published 2000 by Springer Publishing
  5. ↑ Physics in the Nineteenth Century, by Robert D. Purrington; p. 160; published 1997 by Rutgers University Press
  6. ↑  Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1898). "Swan, William". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 196.
  7. ↑ William Swan & John Couch Adams (1819-1892) (Reflections from Alchemy to Astrophysics - section 6) at Saint Andrews University; published May 9, 1996; retrieved April 17, 2013