Samuel Hunter Christie

Samuel Hunter Christie was a British physicist and mathematician who lived from 22 March 1784 to 24 January 1865. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Smith's Prize and finished as second wrangler, and he became particularly interested in magnetism, studying the Earth's magnetic field and designing improvements to the magnetic compass, partly in collaboration with Peter Barlow. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826, delivered its Bakerian Lecture in 1833 and served as its Secretary from 1837 to 1853. In 1833 he published his diamond method for comparing the resistances of wires, the forerunner of the Wheatstone bridge; it went unrecognised until Charles Wheatstone proposed it in 1843, and it is Wheatstone's name that is now attached to the device. Christie taught mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from 1838 until his retirement in 1854.