Person

Lodge, Oliver, Sir, 1851-1940

1851-1940

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge was born on June 12, 1851, in Penkhull, Staffordshire, England.

He was a British physicist, educator, and author. In 1865, he left his schooling and entered his father's business (Oliver Lodge & Son) as an agent for B. Fayle & Co. selling Purbeck blue clay to the pottery manufacturers until 1873. He obtained a scholarship to the Royal College of Science, London (1872-1873). Lodge studied advanced mathematics at the University of London (B.Sc., 1875; PhD. in science, 1877). He lectured at Bedford College, London (1879-1880), and in 1881, he became Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the newly founded University College, Liverpool. In 1900, he was appointed the first principal of the new Birmingham University, remaining there until his retirement in 1919. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures ("The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors"), Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". His experiments led to the invention of practical wireless telegraphy or the radio. He served as President of the Liverpool Physical Society (1889-1893) and President of the British Association (1912–1913). He was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898 and was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours. In 1898, he was awarded the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent by the U.S Patent Office. In 1901, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. He believed the mind lives on after death and wrote 40 books on this and related subjects including "Raymond, or Life and Death" (1916), which gained popular interest, especially in the paranormal world.

In 1877, he married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall (1851–1929). He died on August 22, 1940, in Lake, Wiltshire, England.