1. Sir Franz Arthur Friedrich Schuster was a German-born British physicist known for his work in spectroscopy, electrochemistry, optics, X-radiography and the application of harmonic analysis to physics.
27 Facts About Arthur Schuster
1. 2.
Arthur Schuster contributed to making the University of Manchester a centre for the study of physics.
3.
Arthur Schuster was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany the son of Francis Joseph Schuster, a cotton merchant and banker, and his wife Marie Pfeiffer.
4.
Arthur Schuster, who had been to school in Frankfurt and was studying in Geneva, joined his parents in 1870 and he and the other children became British citizens in 1875.
5.
From his childhood, Arthur Schuster had been interested in science and after working for a year for the family firm of Arthur Schuster Brothers in Manchester, he persuaded his father to let him study at Owens College.
6.
Arthur Schuster studied mathematics under Thomas Barker and physics under Balfour Stewart, and began research with Henry Roscoe on the spectra of hydrogen and nitrogen.
7.
Arthur Schuster spent a year with Gustav Kirchhoff at the University of Heidelberg, and having gained his PhD, returned to Owens as an unpaid demonstrator in physics.
8.
Arthur Schuster later used his family's wealth to buy material and equipment and to endow readerships in mathematical physics at Manchester and meteorology at the University of Cambridge.
9.
Arthur Schuster contributed to the Royal Society and the International Union for Co-operation in Solar Research.
10.
Arthur Schuster worked with James Clerk Maxwell and with Rayleigh.
11.
Arthur Schuster succeeded his teacher Balfour Stewart as professor of physics in 1888.
12.
Arthur Schuster resigned from the chair, partly for health reasons and partly to promote the cause of international science.
13.
Arthur Schuster is credited with coining the concept of antimatter in two letters to Nature in 1898.
14.
Arthur Schuster hypothesized antiatoms, and whole antimatter solar systems, which would yield energy if the atoms combined with atoms of normal matter.
15.
Arthur Schuster's hypothesis was given a mathematical foundation by the work of Paul Dirac in 1928, which predicted antiparticles and later led to their discovery.
16.
Arthur Schuster is perhaps most widely remembered for his periodogram analysis, a technique which was long the main practical tool for identifying statistically important frequencies present in a time series of observations.
17.
Arthur Schuster went on to apply the technique to analysing sunspot activity.
18.
Arthur Schuster is credited by Chandrasekhar to have given a fresh start to the radiative transfer problem.
19.
Arthur Schuster formulated in 1905 a problem in radiative transfer in an attempt to explain the appearance of absorption and emission lines in stellar spectra.
20.
In 1913, Arthur Schuster was elected to both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
21.
Arthur Schuster was regarded by his contemporaries as a mathematical physicist of exceptional ability but as a capable administrator and teacher, and an advocate for the role of science in education and industry.
22.
Arthur Schuster died in Hare Hatch on 14 October 1934.
23.
Arthur Schuster is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in outer London.
24.
Arthur Schuster was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879, and knighted in the 1920 New Year Honours.
25.
Arthur Schuster served as secretary of the Royal Society and was elected vice-president and foreign secretary.
26.
Arthur Schuster served as secretary of the International Research Council and on the management committees for the Meteorological Office and National Physical Laboratory.
27.
Arthur Schuster was knighted by King George V in 1920.