William Gilbert

William Gilbert was physician to Elizabeth I and president of the College of Physicians, and in 1600 published On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies, the first great work of experimental science in England, which reported eighteen years of experiments with magnets and concluded that the earth itself is a great magnet, which is why the compass points north. Galileo praised him, Kepler took from him the idea of a force acting at a distance, and Bacon, who disliked his speculation, borrowed his method. He coined the word electricity from the Greek for amber. He died of plague three years after the book appeared.