History of the electricity -Sir Williams Gilbert pag. 20

Family of Suffolk (England is born from an important), to 14 years she enters in the St.Jon' s College of Cambridge, and to 20 years it is already Master of Arts and teaching of mathematics. Of he it is known that it was of imposing stature, of also classified jovial character if and that, for being able itself to dedicate to its preferred studies with total engagement, (this at least is the official version), was not never married, investing all its revives economic in its scientific experiments. In 1569, to 25 years, bachelor in medicine and, endured after, physics; after various travels in Europe and above all in Italy, in 1573 it returns to London, where, in 1600, he is elect President of the Real College of the Doctors in order to

become, a year after, personal doctor of Queen Elisabetta.

In the own dwelling to deep Colchester a private scientific academy, where it constructs, between the other, a reproduction of the earth, under shape of a magnetic sphere, from called he "terrella", with the scope to carry out on risen every it of possible experimentation, in order to make a little light on the magnetic phenomena, on which still ran the more absurd hypotheses, like participations of animistic-vitaliste forces. The main discoveries that gush from its studies and experiments, always lead with perseverance, can therefore be re assumed: clean distinction between attraction magnetic electrical worker and; beyond to the amber, other materials had to be consider you like loadable electrically bodies; a magnet loses its force if it is heated; the iron is magnetized also with the action of a magnetic field. Its theory that the rubbing provoked on to the body electrical worker of the "effluvia", which, returning to the body, attracted the small and light objects you mail in the immediate vicinities, appears still primitive, but it has its importance, because it tries to give one scientific explanation of the phenomena electrical workers, is untied from bizarre and the fanciful theories then in vogue. The work of Gilbert, from the title it "De Magnet", published in 1600, is composed of 6 books, which the first one is an historical introduction to the argument, while the others 5 are not other that the exposure of the 5 magnetic motions from he finds to you in the course of the experimentations. For some students, the treaty "De Magnet" can be considered a physics treaty does not experience them, but "the last important work of natural magic that it studies the hidden forces of the nature", in any case Gilbert is thought, from more, the initiator of the preparatory period of the electrical engineering. William Gilbert dies to London 30 November of 1603, because of an epidemic of plague that hits England and that, only in the understood one them, reaper 30,000 victims.

Sir William Gilbert