Albert Potter Wills

Albert Potter Wills (1873–1937) was an American physicist who researched magnetic materials and was the PhD advisor of the Nobel Prize winner Isidor Isaac Rabi.

During his career he investigated magnetic susceptibilities, magnetic shielding, magnetostriction, conduction of electricity through mercury vapor, and hydrodynamics. He also wrote a textbook on vector analysis.

Wills received his PhD from Clark University in 1897 under Arthur Gordon Webster with a thesis entitled: On the susceptibility of diamagnetic and weakly magnetic substances.

During 1898–1899 Wills worked at the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin. During 1899–1902 he was at Bryn Mawr College and 1902–1903 at the Cooper Hewitt Laboratory. His final appointment, 1903–1937, was at Columbia University.

References

• J. C. Poggendorff, Biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch für Mathematik, Astronomie, Physik, Chemie und verwandte Wissenschaftsgebiete; P. Weinmeister, P., Ed.; Verlag-Chemie: Berlin, 1904; Bd. IV, p. 1644.
• American Men of Science, 2nd ed.; Cattell, J.M., Eds.; Science Press: Lancaster, PA, 1910; pp. 515.
• "Prof. Albert Wills is dead in Florida," The New York Times, Apr 18, 1937, p. 48 (or II 8), col. 4.
• National Cyclopaedia of American Biography being the history of the United States. New York: James T White & Co, 1939; Vol 27, pp. 430–431.
• A.P. Wills, "On the susceptibility of diamagnetic and weakly magnetic substances," PhD Thesis, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 1897. (Also appeared in Phil. Mag. 1898, 45, pp. 432–447.
• I.I. Rabi, Phys. Rev. 1927, 29(1), pp. 174–185

External links

• Albert Potter Wills at the Mathematics Genealogy Project