Edwin Plimpton Adams

Edwin Plimpton Adams
Born(1878-01-23)January 23, 1878
Prague, Bohemia-Moravia
DiedDecember 31, 1956(1956-12-31) (aged 78)
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Physics
InstitutionsPrinceton University

Edwin Plimpton Adams (Prague, 23 January 1878[1] – Princeton, New Jersey, 31 December 1956) was an American physicist known for translating Einstein's lectures. Clinton Joseph Davisson attended his lectures. Adams was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1915.[2]

Biography

Early life and education

Edwin Plimpton Adams was born in Prague, at the time part of Bohemia, on 23 January 1878 to missionary parents. His father, Rev. Edwin Augustus Adams (1837–1927), was an American pastor from Connecticut, who spent 10 years as a representative of the American Board of Foreign Missions in Prague, before moving back the family back to Northboro, Connecticut, and then Chicago.[3] His mother was Caroline Amelia Plimpton (1842–1928).

Adams earned his bachelor's degree at Beloit College in 1899 and PhD in physics at Harvard University in 1904. During his graduate studies he was a Tyndall fellow at Harvard which allowed him to study at Berlin, Göttingen, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

In 1903, Adams was hired as an instructor for the Princeton University Physics Department, helping expand the four person department originally consisting of Cyrus Fogg Brackett, William Francis Magie, E. H. Loomis, and Howard McClenahan.[4] During his first few years, Adams taught courses in a number of subjects at the undergraduate and graduate level and took on graduate students to work on experimental research in electricity and magnetism. He became a full professor in 1909 and his research interests later shifted to theory when he took over teaching advanced theoretical physics and applied mathematics courses when James H Jeans left Princeton to return to England.[5][4]

During World War I, Adams took leave from Princeton to join the Royal Engineers of the British Army. He was in active service in France with a sound-ranging company from 1917 to 1919, and he was later made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.[4]

Selected publications

  • ; Hippisley, Richard Lionel (1922). Greenhill, Alfred George (ed.). Smithsonian Mathematical Formulae and Tables of Elliptic Functions. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Vol. 74 (1 ed.). Washington D.C., USA: Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2016-04-17. (NB. A significant number of entries of this book were later included in Iosif Moiseevich Ryzhik's integral table Tables of integrals, sums, series and products (Таблицы интегралов, сумм, рядов и произведений) in 1945.)

Further reading

References

  1. ^ "Adams, Edwin Plimpton". Who Was Who Among North American Authors, 1921-1939. Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1976. p. 7. ISBN 0810310414.
  2. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-10-31.
  3. ^ Jameson, E. O. (1886). The biographical sketches of prominent persons, and the genealogical records of many early and other families in Medway, Mass. 1713-1886 (Reprint ed.). Millis, Mass.: J. A. & R. A. Reid, printers. pp. 4–5.
  4. ^ a b c Shenstone, A. G. (1957-02-22). "E. P. Adams, Princeton Physicist". Science. 125 (3243): 339–339. doi:10.1126/science.125.3243.339. ISSN 0036-8075.
  5. ^ "Memorials: Edwin Plimpton Adams". Princeton Alumni Weekly. Vol. 57, no. 30. July 5, 1957. p. 40. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
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