McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
King, Louis Vessot, 1886–1956
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1886-1956
History
Physicist Louis Vessot King was born in Toronto, and graduated with a B.A from McGill in 1905 at the age of nineteen. Encouraged by Ernest Rutherford to continue his study of physics, King went to Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1908. In 1915 he was awarded a D.Sc. from McGill. King's long teaching career at McGill began in 1910 with his appointment as sessional Lecturer in physics. He became Assistant Professor in 1913, Associate Professor in 1915, and was Macdonald Professor of Physics from 1920 until his retirement in 1938. King's major research and publishing interests lay in fog alarm research, applications of electromagnetism, heat convection, and radiation. He developed the gyromagnetic electron theory, invented the hot-wire anemometer and worked on methods of submarine detection during World War I. He passed away in 1956.