John Hopkinson, FRS, was a British physicist, electrical engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the IEE twice in 1890 and 1896.
12 Facts About John Hopkinson
2.
John Hopkinson invented the three-wire system for the distribution of electrical power, for which he was granted a patent in 1882.
3.
John Hopkinson worked in many areas of electromagnetism and electrostatics, and in 1890 was appointed professor of electrical engineering at King's College London, where he was director of the Siemens Laboratory.
4.
John Hopkinson was born in Manchester, the eldest of 5 children.
5.
John Hopkinson was educated at Queenwood School in Hampshire and Owens College in Manchester.
6.
John Hopkinson won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1867 and graduated in 1871 as Senior Wrangler, having placed first in the demanding Cambridge Mathematical Tripos examination.
7.
John Hopkinson could have followed a purely academic career but instead chose engineering as his vocation.
8.
In 1877 John Hopkinson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his application of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism to problems of electrostatic capacity and residual charge.
9.
John Hopkinson studied magnetic permeability at high temperature, and discovered what was later called the Hopkinson peak effect.
10.
The series-parallel method of electric motor control, for which John Hopkinson was granted a British patent in 1881, would prove to be an important advance in the development of electric railways.
11.
John Hopkinson twice held the office of President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
12.
In 1897 the Volunteer Corps of Electrical Engineers was formed and John Hopkinson became major in command of the corps.