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Silvanus P. Thompson

Silvanus P. Thompson, English physicist, engineer, and academic (died 1916)

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Born
June 19, 1851
Died
June 12, 1916
Zodiac sign
Gemini
Birth year
1851

About Silvanus P. Thompson

Silvanus Phillips Thompson was an English professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, England. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1891 and was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author. Thompson's most enduring publication is his 1910 text Calculus Made Easy, which teaches the fundamentals of infinitesimal calculus, and is still in print. Thompson also wrote a popular physics text, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, as well as biographies of Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday. Finsbury Technical College was a teaching institution created by the City and Guilds Institute and it was as its Principal and Professor of Physics that Thompson was to devote the next 30 years. In 1878 the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education was founded.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Silvanus P. Thompson timeline

  1. In 1878 the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education was founded.
  2. Thompson's most enduring publication is his 1910 text Calculus Made Easy, which teaches the fundamentals of infinitesimal calculus, and is still in print.

The world when Silvanus P. Thompson was born

Silvanus P. Thompson was born in 1851. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1851

  • Best-selling bookMoby-Dick by Herman Melville

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineGreat Exhibition in London — first World's Fair
  • Technology milestoneIsaac Singer patents practical sewing machine
  • World population~1.31B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderMillard Fillmore
  • U.S. population23.8M

1851 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Silvanus P. Thompson's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18512026
Population23.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.