Prof William Swan

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This s ...

PRSSA LLD (13 March 1818 in Edinburgh – 1 March 1894 in Shandon, Argyll) was a Scottish mathematician and

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

best known for his 1856 discovery of the Swan band.

Life

He was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore o ...

the only child of David Swan, engineer, and his wife, Janet Smith. Janet was the daughter of Thomas Smith, lighthouse engineer. Her sister was married to the famous lighthouse engineer, Robert Stevenson. He was privately educated at home, 7 Union Street, and appears to have been both lonely and unhappy. His father died in 1821 when he was only three. His mother took in lodgers to make ends meet, including at one point

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, D ...

. William's only childhood friend is said to have been his cousin,

Thomas Stevenson Thomas Stevenson PRSE MInstCE FRSSA FSAScot (22 July 1818 – 8 May 1887) was a pioneering Scottish civil engineer, lighthouse designer and meteorologist, who designed over thirty lighthouses in and around Scotland, as well as the Stevenson ...

(father of

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as '' Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...

). At 17 he was sent to

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

to study divinity. He "came out" during the

Disruption of 1843 The Disruption of 1843, also known as the Great Disruption, was a schism in 1843 in which 450 evangelical ministers broke away from the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. The main conflict was over whether the Church of S ...

and became an active member of the Free Church, teaching mathematics and physics at the Free Church Normal School. From there he move to teach the same subjects at the Scottish Naval and Military Academy in Edinburgh. In 1848 he was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

his proposer being Philip Kelland. He served as Secretary to the society 1858-59. In the 1850s "William Swan, teacher of mathematics" was living at 4 Duke Street in the

New Town New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

, renamed Dublin Street in the 1920s. In 1856, Swan applied to join the faculty at

Marischal College Marischal College ( ) is a large granite building on Broad Street in the centre of Aberdeen in north-east Scotland, and since 2011 has acted as the headquarters of Aberdeen City Council. However, the building was constructed for and is on long ...

, but was passed over in favor of

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...

. Swan subsequently joined the Scottish Naval and Military Academy, where in 1857 he demonstrated that Fraunhofer's D-line in the spectrum of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrare ...

was caused by the presence of

sodium Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin ''natrium'') and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable ...

; in this respect, he is sometimes credited as having inspired

Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coine ...

's research into the same issue. In 1859, he joined the faculty of Saint Andrews University, where he was a professor of

natural philosophy Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science. From the ancient w ...

until 1880. He was awarded two honorary doctorates (LLD): firstly from

in 1869, secondly from St Andrews University in 1886. He died of heart disease at his wife's country house of Ardchapel in Shandon in western Scotland. He is buried with his wife Georgina (who pre-deceased him) in

Warriston Cemetery Warriston Cemetery is a cemetery in Edinburgh. It lies in Warriston, one of the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built by the then newly-formed Edinburgh Cemetery Company, and occupies around of land on a slightly sloping s ...

in northern

. The grave lies in the narrow walled area between the main cemetery and the Water of Leith Walkway (in the south-east corner of the main cemetery.

Recognition

In 1843, the Royal Scottish Society of the Arts awarded Swan a gold medal for his scientific achievements.William Swan & John Couch Adams (1819-1892) (Reflections from Alchemy to Astrophysics - section 6)
at Saint Andrews University; published May 9, 1996; retrieved April 17, 2013. He served as their President 1882–1885.

Family

In 1859 he married Georgina Frances Downie (née Cullen) (1809–1882). They had no children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swan, William 1818 births 1894 deaths Scottish physicists Spectroscopists