Arthur Gordon Webster (November 28, 1863 – May 15, 1923) was an American physicist who founded the American Physical Society.
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Biography
Webster was born on November 28, 1863, at Brookline, Massachusetts, to William Edward Webster and Mary Shannon Davis. On October 8, 1889, he married Elizabeth Munroe Townsend, daughter of Captain Robert Townsend and Harriett Munro of Albany, New York.
Webster had graduated from Harvard College in 1885 at the top of his class and had stayed for a year as instructor in mathematics and physics. At the end of that year he went to the University of Berlin where he studied for four years with Hermann von Helmholtz, receiving his PhD in 1890. Helmholtz is said to have considered Webster his favorite American student. During this period Webster also studied in Paris and Stockholm. He was unusually proficient in literature and was fluent in Latin, Greek, German, French, and Swedish, with a good knowledge of Italian and Spanish and competency in Russian and Modern Greek.
Clark University president G. Stanley Hall appointed Webster assistant professor and head of the Physical Laboratories in 1892, when physicist Albert A. Michelson left for the newly organized University of Chicago. At that time, only Johns Hopkins University and Clark University had doctoral programs in physics. Webster was promoted to full professor in 1900.
Webster was unusual for his time in that he was both a proficient mathematician as well as a competent experimentalist.