Arthur Mason Worthington CB, FRS (11 June 1852 in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 – 5 December 1916 in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 physicist and educator. He is best known for his work on fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics is the study of fluids and the forces on them. Fluid mechanics can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; fluid kinematics, the study of fluids in motion; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion...

, especially the physics of splash

Splash (fluid mechanics)

In fluid mechanics, a splash is a sudden disturbance to the otherwise quiescent free surface of a liquid . The disturbance is typically caused by a solid object suddenly hitting the surface, although splashes can occur in which moving liquid supplies the energy...

es; for observing those, he pioneered techniques of high speed photography

High speed photography

High speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 128 frames per second or greater, and of at least three...

. He also proposed the slug as a unit of inertial mass, and the pound-foot

Pound-foot (torque)

A pound-foot is a unit of torque . One pound-foot is the torque created by one pound force acting at a perpendicular distance of one foot from a pivot point....

 as a dedicated unit of torque

Torque

Torque, moment or moment of force , is the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis, fulcrum, or pivot. Just as a force is a push or a pull, a torque can be thought of as a twist....

.

Career

He was Science Master at Clifton College

Clifton College

Clifton College is a co-educational independent school in Clifton, Bristol, England, founded in 1862. In its early years it was notable for emphasising science in the curriculum, and for being less concerned with social elitism, e.g. by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated...

, Bristol (1877, 1880-1884) and then Headmaster at the Royal Naval Engineering College

Royal Naval Engineering College

The Royal Naval Engineering College was a specialist establishment for the training of Royal Navy engineers. It was founded as Keyham College in 1880, new buildings were opened in Manadon in 1940 and the old college site at Keyham closed in 1958...

, Devonport.

In June 1893 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His candidacy citation read:

Head Master and Professor of Physics, Royal Naval Engineering College, Devonport. Distinguished as a physicist, especially for his researches on surface tension and on the stretching of liquids. Author of the following papers: - 'On the Forms assumed by Drops of Liquid falling Vertically on a Horizontal Plate' (Proc Roy Soc, 1876-1877); 'On the Spontaneous Segmentation of a Liquid Annulus' (ibid, 1879); 'On Pendent Drops' (ibid, 1881); 'On Impact with a Liquid Surface' (ibid, 1882); 'On the Horizontal Motion of Floating Bodies under the Action of Capillary Forces' (Phil Mag, 1883); On the Surface Forcesin Fliuds' (ibid, 1884); 'On the Error involved in Prof Quincke's Method of Calculating Surface Tensions from the Dimensions of Flat Drops and Bubbles' (ibid, 1885); 'A Capillary Multiplier' (ibid); 'On Tensional Stress and Strain within a Liquid' (Brit Assoc, Sect A, 1888); 'On the Discharge of Electrification by Flames' (Brit Assoc, Rept Electrolysis Comm, 1889); 'on the Mechanical Stretching of Liquids, an Experimental Determination of the Volume-Extensibility of Ethyl Alcohol' (read before the Roy Soc, Feb 4, 1892). Also of the following: - 'Physical Laboratory Practice,' and 'The Dynamics of Rotation.