C. V. Boys
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sir Charles Vernon Boys, FRS (15 March 1855 – 30 March 1944) was a British physicist, known for his careful and innovative experimental work.
Boys also worked on high-speed photography of lightning and bullets in flight, and conducted public lectures on the properties of soap films, which were gathered into the book Soap Bubbles: Their Colours and the Forces Which Mould Them, a classic of scientific popularisation. The first edition of Soap Bubbles appeared in 1890 and the second in 1911; it has remained in print to this day. The book deeply impressed French writer Alfred Jarry, who in 1898 wrote the absurdist novel Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, in which the title character, who was born at the age of 63 and sails in a sieve, is described as a friend of C.V. Boys (see also 'Pataphysics). The book was also a favourite of American poet, Elizabeth Bishop.