WOOD, ROBERT WILLIAMS ), American physicist, born in Concord, Mass., May 2, 1868. He graduated at Harvard in 1891, studied a year at Johns Hopkins university and two years at the University of Berlin (1892-94). He was assistant professor in physics at the University of Wisconsin, 1897-1901, and then became professor of experimental physics at Johns Hopkins. A method which he originated in 1898 of thaw ing frozen water mains and service pipes by passing an electric current through them has been widely adopted. He was awarded
the Rumford medal for investigations in light, particularly for his work upon the optical properties of metallic vapours, and the John Scott Legacy medal for his diffraction process of colour photography. Besides scientific papers and monographs he is the author of Physical Optics (1905 ; rev. ed., 1910 and Researches in Physical Optics (2 vols., 1913-19).