Arthur Schuster, 1851-1934

On Sunday, October 14, 1934, at the age of 83, Sir Arthur Schuster died at his home, Yeldall, near Twyford, Berkshire, England, after a long and distressing illness. The science of terrestrial magnetism and electricity thus loses one who made outstanding contributions to its progress.Arthur Schuster was born at Frankfort-on-Main on September 12, 1851, of a Jewish family which, as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, had established a business in cotton goods in England. Till the age of sixteen he lived in Frankfort, where his father was a banker; he then studied French for two years at Geneva. In 1870 he joined his family in Manchester, whither they had emigrated in 1869, and entered his father's business. In the evenings he attended classes at the Owens College (afterwards the University) in that town, and within a year persuaded his father to let him leave the business to follow a scientific career. For a year he studied physics under Balfour Stewart (professor of physics at Manchester, 1870-87), and then studied spectrum analysis for two years under Kirchhoff at Heidelberg, where he obtained the Ph.D. in 1873. Returning to Manchester, he became an unpaid assistant to Balfour Stewart for a year, then studied at Göttingen under W. Weber and at Berlin under Helmholtz; led a British eclipse expedition to Siam (at the age of twenty-four); spent another year as honorary assistant at Manchester; worked for nearly two years in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, first under Clerk Maxwell and later under Rayleigh; and in 1878 accompanied another eclipse expedition, to Colorado. This unusually long and varied training, made possible by the support of a wealthy and enlightened parent, enhanced the fruitfulness of his great natural gifts—not only in his capacity as an individual scientific worker, but also, especially in his later years, as a leader in international scientific organisations, work for which he was peculiarly well fitted by his administrative ability and his knowledge of languages.