Arthur William Rucker
Encyclopedia
Sir Arthur William Rucker (or Rücker), KB
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

, FRS (23 October 1848, Clapham Park
Clapham Park
Clapham Park is an area in the Borough of Lambeth in London, to the south of central Clapham and west of Brixton.The original Clapham Park estate was a speculative development by Thomas Cubitt, who bought of Bleak Hall Farm in 1825, and marked out plots for building around the new broad,...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 – 1 November 1915, Everington at Yattendon
Yattendon
Yattendon is a village and civil parish northeast of Newbury, Berkshire. The M4 motorway passes about south of the village.-Geography:Yattendon stretches from Everington in the west to the hamlet of Burnt Hill in the east and the woodland just east of Yattendon Court, including Mumgrove Copse,...

 in Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

) was a British physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

. He gained his BA at Brasenose College
Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, originally Brazen Nose College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. As of 2006, it has an estimated financial endowment of £98m...

, Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, in 1871, and was a Fellow there from 1871 to 1876. He was Professor of Physics at Yorkshire College, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 from 1874 to 1885, and then at the Royal College of Science
Royal College of Science
The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Alumni include H. G. Wells and Brian May and are distinguishable by the letters ARCS ...

 from 1886 to 1901, when he left to become Principal
Principal (academia)
The Principal is the chief executive and the chief academic officer of a university or college in certain parts of the Commonwealth.-Canada:...

 of the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 in 1884. He jointly gave the Royal Society's Bakerian Lecture
Bakerian Lecture
The Bakerian Lecture is a prize lecture of the Royal Society, a lecture on physical sciences.In 1775 Henry Baker left £100 for a spoken lecture by a Fellow on such part of natural history or experimental philosophy as the Society shall determine....

 in 1889, and was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal, is a silver-gilt medal awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences" made within the Commonwealth of...

 in 1891: "For his researches on liquid films, and his contributions to our knowledge of terrestrial magnetism". He served as Secretary of the Royal Society from 1896 to 1901, and was knighted in 1902.

His first wife died in 1878 and he married Thereza, a daughter of Nevil Story-Maskylene
Nevil Story Maskelyne
Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story Maskelyne was an English geologist and politician.-Scientific career:Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, Maskelyne taught mineralogy and chemistry at Oxford from 1851, before becoming a professor of mineralogy, 1856-95. He was Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum...

, in 1892.

Sources

  • Entry for Rucker in the Royal Society's Library and Archive catalogue's details of Fellows (accessed 27 April 2008)

External links

  • Obituary: Sir Arthur Rucker, Geographical Review
    Geographical Review
    The Geographical Review is an academic journal of the American Geographical Society. Currently published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. The periodicals are devoted exclusively to geography and contain original articles on all aspects of the discipline. The "Geographical Record"...

    , Vol. 1, No. 4 (Apr., 1916), pp. 309–309
  • Sir Arthur William Rucker, picture from Science and Society Picture Library (Science Museum, London)
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