[Oliver Joseph]. English physicist, born at Penkhull, Staffordshire, on the 12th of June 1851, and educated at Newport (Salop) grammar school. He was intended for a business career, but being attracted to science he entered University College, London, in 1872, graduating D.Sc. at London University in 1877. In 1875 he was appointed reader in natural philosophy at Bedford College for Women, and in 1879 he became assistant professor of applied mathematics at University College, London. Two years later he was called to the chair of physics in University College, Liverpool, where he remained till in 1900 he was chosen first principal of the new Birmingham University. He was knighted in 1902. His original work includes investigations on lightning, the seat of the electromotive force in the voltaic cell, the phenomena of electrolysis and the speed of the ion, electromagnetic waves and wireless telegraphy, the motion of the aether near the earth, and the application of electricity to the dispersal of fog and smoke. He presided over the mathematical and physical section of the British Association in 1891, and served as president of the Physical Society in 1899–1900 and of the Society for Psychical Research in 1901–1904. In addition to numerous scientific memoirs he wrote, among other works, Lightning Conductors and Lightning Guards, Signalling without Wires, Modern Views of Electricity, Electrons and The Ether of Space, together with various books and papers of a metaphysical and theological character. Subsequently to 1910 Sir Oliver Lodge became increasingly prominent as a leader in psychical research and a strong believer in the possibility of communicating with the dead. Amongst his later publications are The Survival of Man (1909); Reason and Belief (1911, 3rd ed.); The War and After (1915); Raymond, or Life and Death (1916), a memoir of his son killed in the World War, with an account of communications thought to have been received from him since; Christopher: a Study in Human Personality (1918), etc. In the early part of 1920 he made an extensive lecturing tour in the United States, having just previously retired from his post as principal of the university of Birmingham.
