the great William Gilberd born today, 24th May, in 1544

Today (24th May), it is the anniversary of the birth of Dr William Gilberd (or Gilbert) in Colchester, in 1544. William Gilberd was the son of lawyer Jerome Gilberd and his wife Jane Coggeshall. After Jane’s death, Jerome married Jane Wingfield and William acquired nine half-siblings.

Gilberd was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge. He is described by expert Stephen Pumfrey as a ‘scientific hero’.

‘… The reputation of William Gilbert (1544-1603) as a great scientific mind traditionally rests on three foundations, all of which are evident in the only book he published, the seminal De Magnete [On the Loadstone] (London, 1600). First, he discovered that the Earth was a giant magnet and, in order to establish the fact, inaugurated the modern science of magnetism. Secondly, he rightly boasted that the method evident in De Magnete was experimental, a radical break with the more textual methods used by his scholastic contemporaries. Finally, he distinguished between magnetism and electricity, which had hitherto been paired as similar, occult attractive principles; he even coined the noun electricitas, which was rapidly Englished as “electricity”. Gilbert [has] been heroised as “the first experimental scientist”, and he would come first, chronologically, in many surveys of scientific minds …’ (Stephen Pumfrey, ‘William Gilbert’, in Cambridge Scientific Minds, edited by Peter Harman and Simon Mitton, 2002, pp 6-20.)

Gilberd practised as a physician in London from 1573, from his house near St Paul’s Cathedral, and he became president of the Royal College of Physicians in 1600. In 1601, he was appointed physician to queen Elizabeth I and, when she died in 1603, to king James I. He was also an astronomer: he had a very modern view on the universe and agreed with Copernicus that the Earth rotates on its axis.

Dr David Tilley, formerly of the University of Essex, writes that Gilberd is known as the ‘Father of Electrical Science’, but that he has an even greater reputation as the father of magnetism and geomagnetism, and hence geophysics: ‘… Some say that Gilberd was also the father of modern science, because De Magnete was the first work in which all the conclusions were based on experiment, thus establishing the scientific method …’

In Colchester, it is thought that the historic house Tymperleys in Trinity Street belonged to the Gilberd family and was Gilberd’s childhood home (there is a commemorative plaque over the gateway). He was buried with his parents over the street, inside Holy Trinity church, and his memorial is still on the wall inside the church. The Gilberd secondary school in Colchester is named after him. Gilberd owned various properties in Colchester and north-east Essex and these are listed in his will: a house and grounds in Trinity Street plus some other land in Colchester; a house at Greenstead; land at Weeley; land at Elmstead; a house at Ardleigh; a house at St Osyth; a house at Dovercourt; a house at Great and Little Oakley; land at Shotley; and a lease in the Manor of Ramsey. Gilberd described himself as ‘Colcestriensis’ on the title page of De Magnete and there is a Gilberd Society in Colchester.

William Gilberd died in London on the 30th November 1603 during an outbreak of the plague. His personal papers and possessions were probably burned when he died; other records were destroyed during the Siege of Colchester in 1648; and the collection of books and instruments which he donated to the Royal College of Physicians was destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666.

In the past, the Trust has undertaken archaeological work in the garden of Tymperleys and on the tower of Holy Trinity church.

Read more about Gilberd at www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/gilbert/life.htm

The image shows a portrait of William Gilberd.

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