author
A. M. (Arthur Mason) Worthington
1852–1916
Best remembered for turning an everyday splash into a scientific mystery, this English physicist helped make high-speed photography a tool of discovery. His work on liquids and motion gave later scientists vivid new ways to study fast, fleeting events.
2 Audiobooks
A Study of Splashes
by A. M. (Arthur Mason) Worthington
The Splash of a Drop
by A. M. (Arthur Mason) Worthington
About the author
Born in Manchester in 1852, Arthur Mason Worthington was an English physicist and educator. He studied at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and went on to build a career that mixed teaching with experimental science. He served as Science Master at Clifton College and later became Headmaster and Professor of Physics at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Devonport.
Worthington is best known for his research on fluid mechanics, especially the shapes made when droplets strike a surface. By using rapid photographic methods to capture those split-second events, he became an early pioneer of high-speed photography. His experiments helped turn the familiar sight of a splash into a serious scientific subject.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1893 and died in Oxford in 1916. Today he is still remembered for the clarity and imagination of his experiments, which brought motion too fast for the eye into view.