Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford
by: Brown, Sanborn C.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a mildly worn dust jacket. 361 pages, index, b&w illustrations. Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford, was one of the most fascinating and complex men of his period (1753~1814). Soldier of fortune, spy, womanizer, brilliant scientist, intriguer, autocrat, inventor, adventurer, an American expatriated to England who did his most productive scientific work in Munich and who died in France, a man devoted to relieving the suffering of the poor, Rumford was all this and more, and Sanborn Brown's biography makes clear that all these aspects merge into a whole human being. The man who conducted experiments on the caloric theory of heat and the ladies' man are one and the same. Clean copy