Samuel Hunter Christie (22 March 1784 – 24 January 1865) was a British scientist and mathematician.
He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was second wrangler. He was particularly interested in magnetism, studying the earth's magnetic field and designing improvements to the magnetic compass. Some of his magnetic research was done in collaboration with Peter Barlow. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826, delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1833 and served as their Secretary from 1837 to 1853. In 1833 he published his 'diamond' method, the forerunner of the Wheatstone bridge, in a paper on the magnetic and electrical properties of metals, as a method for comparing the resistances of wires of different thicknesses. However, the method went unrecognised until 1843, when Charles Wheatstone proposed it, in another paper for the Royal Society, for measuring resistance in electrical circuits. Although Wheatstone presented it as Christie's invention, it is his name, rather than Christie's, that is now associated with the device.
Christie taught mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1838 until his retirement in 1854. A portrait photograph of Christie in 1865 by Ernest Edwards is held by the National Portrait Gallery. He had ten children (five with each wife), of which eight survived him. His eldest son was the astronomer William Henry Mahoney Christie (1845–1922).
Samuel Christie is the son of one James Christie, although this was almost certainly not the auctioneer James Christie (founder of the great auction house). Instead he was probably the son of a James Christie who in 1821 described himself as a tailor, late of Leicester Square but then of Newman Street, and who died in 1825 aged eighty-six. Because they had the same name, some confusion has arisen between the two James Christie's and many websites incorrectly state that he was the son of the auctioneer. But, as the latter occupied a house in Pall Mall from 1768 until 1803, and died in that year, it seems certain that the James Christie who lived in Leicester Square was not the auctioneer.
Read more about Samuel Hunter Christie: Marriages
Famous quotes containing the words samuel, hunter and/or christie:
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 6:6.
The words were rendered by Samuel Johnson in the opening lines of The Ant: “Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, sluggard, and be wise.”
“Every one finds by his own experience, as well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate the apple, and the amenities of the garden, is essentially different from that of the hunter and forest life, and neither can displace the other without loss.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[My father] was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway. He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)