biography
| name: |
Thompson, Sir Benjamin, Graf (Count) von Rumford
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known as Count Rumford
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1753–1814)
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| biography:
| Scientist and administrator, born in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA. He showed a youthful aptitude for mathematics and science, and after a three-year apprenticeship with a Salem, MA merchant, he studied medicine and taught school briefly. In 1772 he married a wealthy widow and accepted a British commission as major in a New Hampshire regiment. As the American Revolution began to heat up, he seemed unable to join one side or the other, but when he was denied a commission in the Continental army, he cast his lot with the Loyalists. After the British evacuated Boston (Mar 1776), he fled to England, leaving his wife behind. Always adept at ingratiating himself with the powerful, he got himself elected to the prestigious Royal Society (1779). He returned to America as a lieutenant-colonel (1781–3) and saw some combat, was knighted (1784), and then went on to serve the Prince of Bavaria for many of the next 18 years. While in Munich, he helped improve conditions for both the Bavarian army and the poor and unemployed, and for his services he was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire, choosing for his title the name of his former wife's hometown, Rumford (now Concord), NH. During 1795–1802 he spent much time in England, but in 1803 he settled permanently in France, where he was briefly married to the widow of the great French chemist, Lavoisier. Although something of a dilettante-tinkerer, he invented a calorimeter, a photometer, and the drip-coffee maker. He did carry out some scientific and mechanical experiments, and in his studies of heat he made a major contribution: by observing the boring of cannons in Munich, he was the first to understand that heat is a form of motion. Never shy about promoting himself, he endowed the Rumford Medals of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Rumford chair of science at Harvard. |
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