T H E 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF 



[FIFTH SERIES.] 



HENRY ANDREWS BUMSTEAD. 



Henry Andrews Bumstead was born in Pekin, Illinois, 

 on March 12tli, 1870. His father was Samuel Josiah 

 Bumstead, a physician of local prominence, and his 

 mother, Sarah Ellen Seiwell. His early education was 

 obtained at the Decatur, Illinois, High School, from which 

 he went to Johns Hopkins in 1887, expecting to study 

 medicine. There he came under the influence of Rowland, 

 who stimulated the interest in physics which he had 

 already shown. After receiving lus B.A. degree in 1891, 

 he remained in Baltimore for two years as an assi-stant 

 in the physics laboratory. In 1893 he was brought to Yale 

 as an instructor by Professor Hastings. He continued 

 his study of physics in the Yale graduate school, and 

 obtained his doctor's degree in 1897. In 1900 he was 

 promoted to an assistant professorship, and six years 

 later he became Professor of Physics in Yale College and 

 Director of the Sloane Laboratory. The year before 

 receiving his doctor's degree he married Luetta Ullrich, of 

 Decatur, Illinois, who survives him. 



Professor Bumstead 's thesis for the doctor's degree, 

 which does not seem to have been published, contains a 

 critical survey of electrodynamic theories in vogue at the 

 time at which it was written. He states in the introduc- 

 tion that his object is ''to set forth the true position of the 

 experiments of Hertz in the history of the development of 

 our knowledge of electricity; and to trace, in some 

 measure, the influence of Helmholtz in the establishment 

 of the true theory of electrodynamics, — an influence which 

 was second only to that of Maxwell. ' ' After an analysis of 

 Ampere's and Grassmann's theories, he makes a critical 

 comparison of the potential theories developed by Neu- 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fifth Series, Vol. I. No. 6.— June, 1921. 



