John Henry Poynting

Biography

John Henry Poynting was born on 9 September 1852 in Monton, England. He studied at Owens College, Manchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow. From 1880, he worked as a professor of physics at Mason Science College (later the University of Birmingham), where he established a strong physics laboratory. He collaborated with J. J. Thomson and other renowned scientists. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1888 and awarded the Royal Medal in 1905. He died on 30 March 1914.

Key discoveries

• Poynting's theorem and the Poynting vector (description of the energy flow of the electromagnetic field, a fundamental concept in electrodynamics)
• Poynting–Robertson effect (the drag on microscopic particles in the Solar System caused by solar light pressure)
• Measurements of the gravitational constant and investigations into the elasticity of materials
• Work on light pressure and the transfer of momentum by radiation