Stewart, Balfour

Balfour Stewart, (born Nov. 1, 1828, Edinburgh—died Dec. 19, 1887, Drogheda, Ire.), Scottish meteorologist and geophysicist noted for his studies of terrestrial magnetism and radiant heat.

Stewart pursued a mercantile career for 10 years before becoming an assistant at Kew Observatory and later an assistant to James Forbes at Edinburgh University, where Stewart conducted his research on radiant heat. In 1859 he became director of Kew Observatory, and in 1870 he became professor of natural philosophy at Owens College, Manchester.

In his work on radiant heat, Stewart was the first to discover that bodies radiate and absorb energy of the same wavelength; his work in this field was soon surpassed, however, by that of the German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. In his studies of terrestrial magnetism, Stewart discovered that daily variation in the magnetic field could be explained by air currents in the upper atmosphere, which act as conductors and generate electrical currents as they pass through the Earth’s magnetic field.

Stewart wrote The Unseen Universe (with Peter Tait, 1875) and many other popular accounts of scientific discoveries of the day.