Mayer, Alfred Marshall

MAYER, ALFRED MARSHALL

(b. Baltimore, Maryland, 13 November 1836; d. Hoboken, New Jersey, 13 July 1897)

physics.

Mayer invented the method of floating tiny magnets in a magnetic field, used in the early twentieth century as a key to discovering or illustrating atomic structure. He studied classics at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore but left at the age of sixteen to become a machinist. A self-educated analytical chemist, he published his first research paper at the age of nineteen; it brought him to the attention of Joseph Henry, who helped him to become assistant professor of physics and chemistry at the University of Maryland when he was only twenty and professor of physical science at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, in 1859. From 1863 to 1865 he studied in Paris, notably under Regnault learning advanced physics, mathematics, and physiotogy. On his return to America, Mayer became professor of natural science at Pennsylvania College of Gettysburg (now Gettysburg College), and then, in 1867, professor of physics and astronomy at Lehigh University; in 1871 he organized the department of physics at the newly founded Stevens Institute of Technology, with which he was associated until his death.

Mayer’s only academic degree was an honorary Ph.D. from Pennsylvania College of Gettysburg in 1866; he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1872), the American Phitosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mayer conducted research in sound, heat, light, and gravity, devised a number of instruments for scientific measurement; and was, the author of about one hundred publications, including fifty-four research articles and three scientific books. He was selected by the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office to direct the photographing of the solar eclipse of 7 August 1869; the results were considered remarkable for those early days of photography; a set of forty-two “perfect photographs,” made at exposures of 0·002 second —five of them during the eighty-three seconds of total eclipse. His major scientific work was in acoustics; Mayer’s Law gives a quantitative relation between pitch and the duration of residual auditory sensation. An avid sportsman, Mayer wrote widely about fishing and invented a rod with which, in 1884, he won first prize al the Amateur Minnow-Casting Tournament of the National Rod and Reel Association.

Mayer is most remembered (and cited) for his experiments in which magnetized needles were inserted into corks, which were then ftoated on water with their south poles upward, under the north pole of a powerful electromagnet. Under these conditions, certain definite stable configurations were observed “which suggested the manner in which atoms of molecules may be grouped in the formation of definite compounds” (Mayer and Woodward, p. 257) and which illustrated various properties of the constitution of matter. These experiments won high praise from Kelvin (Nature, 18 [1878], 13–14) and were later used by J. J. Thomson (Electricity and Matter [New Haven, 1904], pp. 114–117, 122; The Corpuscular Theory of Matter [New York, 1907], p. 110) and others as a key to the way in which a characteristic number of electrons might be arranged within the atoms of each chemical element in relation to the periodic table. Mayer thus made a small but significant contribution to the theory of atomic structure.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. A full list of Mayer’s scientific publications is given in Alfred G. Mayer and Robert S. Woodward, “Biographical Memoir of Alfred Marshall Mayer 1836–1897,” in Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 8 (1916), 243–272. A list of his publications for the period 1871–1897 is given in his biography. in F. DeR. Furman, Morton Memorial: A History of the Stevens Institute of Technotogy (Hoboken, NJ., 1905), pp. 202–219.

Mayer’s articles on the stable configurations of magnets floating freely in a magnetic held were published in Amercian Journal of Science, 3rd ser., 15 (1878), 276–277, 477–478; 16 (1878), 247–256; and in Scientific American, supp. 5 (1878), 2045–2047, where these experiments are said “to illustrate the action of atomic forces and the molecular structure of matter…” (which includes allotropy, isomerism, and the kinetic theory of gases).

II. Secondary Literature. Besides the two biographies mentioned above, see F. DeR. Furman’s article on Mayer in the Dictionary of American Biography, XII A biography based on personal recollections was published H. W. LeConte Stevens in Science, n.s. 6 (1897), 261–269. Obituaries appeared in Stevens Indicator, 14 (1897), 367; American Journal of Science, 4th ser., 4 (1897), 161–164; and New York Times (14 July 1897), p. 5.

I. B. Cohen