Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was an English physicist and electrical engineer whose investigations into electromagnetic radiation (EMR) contributed to the development of radio. He identified EMR independent of Heinrich Hertz's proof. In his 1894 Royal Institution lecture, The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors, Lodge's demonstrations on methods to transmit and detect radio waves included an improved early radio receiver he named the coherer. His work led to his holding key patents in early radio communication, his "syntonic" (or tuning) patents. Lodge became Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics in Bedford College, London in 1879, was appointed Professor of Physics in University College Liverpool in 1881 and was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1919. Lodge was a pioneer of spiritualism; his pseudoscientific research into life after death was a topic on which he wrote many books, including the best-selling Raymond; or, Life and Death (1916), which detailed messages he received from a medium, which he believed came from his son who was killed in the First World War.
Early life Oliver Joseph Lodge was born on 12 June 1851 at The Views in Penkhull, Staffordshire, and was educated at Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire. His parents were Oliver Lodge (1826–1884)—later a ball clay merchant at Wolstanton, Staffordshire—and his wife, Grace Heath (1826–1879). Lodge was their first child, and altogether they had eight sons and a daughter. Lodge's siblings included Sir Richard Lodge (1855–1936), historian; Eleanor Constance Lodge (1869–1936), historian and principal of Westfield College, London; and Alfred Lodge (1854–1937), mathematician. When Lodge was 12-years-old, the family moved house to Wolstanton. At Moreton House on the southern tip of Wolstanton Marsh, he took over a large outbuilding for his first scientific experiments during the long school holidays. In 1865, the 14-year-old Lodge left his schooling and joined his father's business (Oliver Lodge & Son) as an agent for B. Fayle & Co selling Purbeck blue clay to the pottery manufacturers. This work sometimes entailed him travelling as far as Scotland. He continued to assist his father until he reached the age of 22. By the age of 18, Lodge's father's growing wealth had enabled him to move his family to Chatterley House, Hanley. From there Lodge attended physics lectures in London, and also attended the Wedgwood Institute in nearby Burslem. At Chatterley House, just a mile south of Etruria Hall where Wedgwood had experimented, Lodge's Autobiography recalled that "something like real experimentation" began for him around 1869. His family moved again in 1875, this time to the nearby Watlands Hall at the top of Porthill Bank between Middleport and Wolstanton (demolished in 1951). Lodge obtained B.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees from the University of London in 1875 and 1877, respectively.
Career and research In Wolstanton, Lodge experimented with producing a wholly new "electromagnetic light" in 1879 and 1880, paving the way for later experimental success. During this time, he also lectured at Bedford College, London. Lodge left the Potteries in 1881 to up take the post of Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the newly-established University College Liverpool. In 1900, Lodge moved from Liverpool back to the Midlands and became the first Principal of the newly-founded University of Birmingham, where he remained until his retirement in 1919. He oversaw the start of the move of the University from Edmund Street in the city centre to its present Edgbaston campus.
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