John Zeleny (March 26, 1872 – June 19, 1951) was an American

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 cau ...

who, in 1911, invented the Zeleny electroscope. He also studied the effect of an electric field on a liquid meniscus. His work is seen by some as a beginning to emergent technologies like liquid metal ion sources and

electrospray The name electrospray is used for an apparatus that employs electricity to disperse a liquid or for the fine aerosol resulting from this process. High voltage is applied to a liquid supplied through an emitter (usually a glass or metallic capilla ...

ing and

electrospinning Electrospinning is a fiber production method that uses electric force to draw charged threads of polymer solutions or polymer melts up to fiber diameters in the order of some hundred nanometers. Electrospinning shares characteristics of both ...

. Zeleny was born in

Racine, Wisconsin Racine ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River. Racine is situated 22 miles (35 km) south of Milwaukee and approximately 60 ...

to a Czech immigrant couple from Křídla. He was the older brother of

Charles Zeleny Charles H. Zeleny (17 September 1878 - 21 December 1939) was an American zoologist of Czech descent. He was a professor at the University of Illinois. He made important contributions to experimental zoology, especially embryology, regeneration, an ...

. He attended the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

(B.S., 1892), followed by

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

(B.A., 1899), and the University of Minnesota (PhD, 1906). Zeleny began his teaching career at the University of Minnesota after earning his B.A. in 1892. In 1915, he joined the faculty at Yale, where he was chairman of the physics department and director of graduate studies in physics until his retirement in 1940.

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Zeleny Electroscope
American physicists American people of Czech descent 1872 births 1951 deaths People from Racine, Wisconsin University of Minnesota alumni Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge University of Minnesota faculty Yale University faculty Presidents of the American Physical Society {{US-physicist-stub