William Gilbert

Timeline

1. 1558–1569Cambridge · CambridgeCompleted literary and medical training at St John's College, Cambridge, taking a bachelor's degree around 1560, a master's in 1564, and an MD in 1569, becoming a senior fellow of the college. This academic career left him familiar with both Galenic medicine and the rising experimental natural philosophy, preparing him to combine the physician's profession with research on magnetism.
2. 1573–1599London · LondonPractised medicine in London from the 1570s, joined the College of Physicians around 1573, and thereafter served several times as censor and treasurer. In his spare time he conducted dip, direction, and magnetization experiments with a spherical terrella, and read the magnetic-variation navigation observations of Norman and others. Over twenty years of experimental notes formed the empirical basis of De Magnete (1600).
3. 1600–1603London · LondonPublished the six-book De Magnete in London in 1600, asserting that the Earth itself is a great magnet and treating frictional electricity separately from magnetism. Elected dean of the College of Physicians the same year, then appointed physician to Elizabeth I, and briefly retained after James I acceded. Died in London in November 1603.