Person: Boys, Sir Charles Vernon

Charles Boys was an English physicist, known for his careful and innovative experimental work.

From there Boys went to the Royal School of Mines where he was taught physics by Frederick Guthrie.
The school had no mathematics department so Boys learnt mathematics from books including Todhunter's Integral Calculus.
Boys is famed as a physicist and inventor of instruments.
After graduating in mining it was natural for Boys to seek employment at a colliery, which he did.
It was by using a quartz fibre suspension in Cavendish type experiments that Boys was able to improve the value obtained for the gravitational constant.
In 1888 Boys was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1887 Boys took up an applied science post of Metropolitan Gas Referee and he held this post until the Referees were abolished in 1939.
Boys received many honours in addition to election to the fellowship of the Royal Society which we mentioned above.
The University of Edinburgh awarded Boys an honorary degree in 1932.

Born 15 March 1855, Wing, Rutland, England. Died 30 March 1944, St Mary Bourne, Andover, Hampshire, England.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin England

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive