Sir David Brewster

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Personal Life

Sir David Brewster was born in Jedburgh, Roxburghsire, Scotland on December 11, 1781. Brewster attended the University of Edinburgh at age 12 for ministry but his interest in science led him to not pursue this profession. He was named a minister of the Church of Scotland but would only preach from the pulpit on one occasion. Brewster would then begin to study different physical phenomenon such as diffraction, reflection, and light absorption for the remainder of his life. In 1831, David Brewster was knighted. In 1838, Brewster became the principal for the United College of St. Salvador and St. Leonard of the University of St. Andrews and in 1859 became principal of the University of Edinburgh.

Brewster was married twice. His first wife was Juliet McPherson. Together, they had four sons and a daughter. After the death of his first wife, Brewster married again in 1857 to Jane Kirk Purnell.

Sir David Brewster died at the age of 87 on February 10, 1868 shortly after contracting penumonia. Shortly before his death he simply said "I shall see Jesus and that will be grand. I shall see Him who made the worlds. The physics building at Heriot-Watt University is named in his honor.

Contribution to Physics

Brewster's work came mainly from his work on optics. His main contributions include:

The laws of light polarization by reflection and refraction.
The discovery of of the polarizing structure induced by heat and pressure.
The discovery of crystals with two axes of double refraction, and many of the laws of their phenomena.
The laws of metallic reflection
Experiments on the absorption of light.

From these discoveries, Brewster created the now famous kaleidoscope. The kaleidoscope gained much popularity around Europe and Brewster became somewhat of a celebrity for a time. He face was even printed on a cigar box. Even though Brewster patented his invention, a model of the kaleidoscope reached London before the patent could be completed so Brewster did not reap any the financial benefits even though the invention was very successful.

Another useful device that came from these discoveries was in the form of the spectroscope. Although Brewster cannot be credited with the invention of the stereoscope since many other scientists were working on the same ideas at the same time as Brewster, his contribution came from suggesting to prisms for uniting the dissimilar pictures. Therefore, Brewster is often credited with the invention of the lenticular stereoscope.

Physical Models

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The main thing to remember about Sir David Brewster is not that his contribution to society was not solely mathematical. He was a keen observer and classifier of facts rather than a theorizer. Many of the laws he established came from many repeated experiments. According to Forbes, "His scientific glory is different in kind from that of Young and Fresnel; but the discoverer of the law of polarization, of biaxal crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age."

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Sir David Brewster

Contents

Personal Life

Contribution to Physics

Physical Models

Examples

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Middling

Difficult

Connectedness

History

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