Early Life, Education, and Employment
William Coblentz was born in North Lima, Ohio to parents of German and Swiss descent. His mother (Catherine) died when Coblentz was just under three, leaving him temporarily with a family of just his younger brother (Oscar) and their father (David). However, the father remarried about 2 years later, and Coblentz appears to have admired his second mother (Amelia). Throughout Coblentz's childhood and adolescence, his family lived on farms, but apparently were never able to buy one of their own. The family's extremely modest circumstances led to a somewhat-delayed education for Coblentz, who did not finish high school (Youngstown, Ohio) until 1896, when he was 22 years old.
Coblentz entered the Case School of Applied Science, now Case Western Reserve University in the fall of 1896, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics in June, 1900. He went on to earn MS (1901) and PhD (1903) degrees from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, staying two years beyond his doctoral time by working as a Research Fellow with support from the Carnegie Institution. In the spring of 1905, Coblentz accepted a position with the newly-founded National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST) in Washington, DC, where he spent his entire career. In 1905 he founded the Bureau's radiometry section, and headed it for 40 years until his retirement in 1945.
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