William Gilbert, the father of electrical science, was born in Colchester in 1540. Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in 1569, he settled, after four years of foreign travel, in London in 1573, and was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians, of which he became Censor, Treasurer, and, in 1599, President. He was in February, 1601, appointed personal Physician to the Queen, whom he attended in her last illness. He came of a well-known East Anglian family, and held extensive landed estates in Essex and Suffolk. He survived the Queen only eight months, dying November 30th, 1603.

Gilbert's monumental work, the De MagneteHistoria de Gentibus SeptentrionalibusArte de NauegarBreve compendio de la spheraExercisesNewe AttractiveA discours of the Variation of the CumpasInstrumenta Artis NavigandiThe Navigators SupplyMécometrie de l'EymanDie Havenvinding