GUTHRIE, FREDERICK (1833-86). An Eng lish physicist. He was born at Bayswater, Eng land, and was educated at University School and College, London. He then studied chemistry at Heidelberg and at Marburg, where he received the degree of Ph.D. He subsequently occupied posi tions at Owens College, Manchester, University of Edinburgh, and the Royal College, Mauritius. En 1869 Guthrie became connected with the Nor mal School of Science at South Kensington, and lectured there until his death. His early ex perimental work was for the most part in chem istry, but later he took up physics, and two of his first papers in this field were on "Drops" and "Bubbles!' In 1870- he discovered the phe nomenon of the attraction of a vibrating tuning fork for a light suspended body near by, known as "Approach Caused by Vibration," and later in vestigated the thermal conductivity of liquids, stationary vibration of liquids in various shaped vessels, electrolysis, solution, and melting-points.
Guthrie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1859, and of the Royal Society of London in 1873, in which year he founded the Physical Society of London, whose president he became in 1884. His efforts in pro moting and improving elementary science teach ing were most successful, and he devised many simple methods and considerable apparatus tor teachers which came into extended use in schools. He was an experimentalist rather than a mathe matical physicist, and was thoroughly practical in his teaching and investigations; he was also a student of the modern languages and a man of letters, having published, under the pseudonym of Frederick Cerny, a poem entitled The Jew (1863) ; Elements of Heat and Non-Metallic Chemistry (1868) ; Magnetism and Electricity (1875) ; Introduction to Physics (1877) ; and the First Book of Knowledge (1881).