William Grylls Adams
William Grylls Adams ( born February 18, 1836 in Laneast, Cornwall, † April 10, 1915 ) was a British physicist.
He came from a wealthy family of farmers, was the younger brother of the astronomer John Couch Adams and studied at Cambridge University (St. John 's College ) with the conclusion of 1855. He was professor of physics (Natural Philosophy) at King's College London. First he was there in 1863 as a lecturer employee of James Clerk Maxwell, and after his departure in 1865, his successor. In 1905 he became Professor Emeritus.
Adams is known for his discovery of the direct conversion of light into electricity ( photoelectric effect) in selenium (more precisely, a selenium - platinum - transition) with his student Richard Evans Day of 1876 known (see History of photovoltaics). Smith 1873 Willoughby previously shown that the conductivity of the selenium -platinum elements increase under light irradiation. The efficiency was about 1 percent is still too low for economic applications, the discovery was but the beginning of the development of solar cells ( selenium cell), where in 1954 at Bell Laboratories in the USA, a breakthrough with the use of silicon succeeded.
He also dealt with dynamos and other areas of electrical engineering. He also dealt with terrestrial magnetism (in the context of its association with the Observatory at Kew ) and undertook an investigation into whether oil fired or electric lighting is better for lighthouses.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1872 ) and 1880 President of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the British Association. In 1875 he held the Bakerian Lecture ( On the Forms of Equipotential Curves and Surfaces and on Lines of Flow). 1878 to 1880 he was President of the Physical Society of London.
He was the posthumous papers and manuscripts of his brother out (1896, 1901).