Stephen Thorpe

Stephen M. Thorpe is a British theoretical physicist specialising in the areas of electromagnetism, general field theory and the properties of polymers. He is noted for original research on the application of quantum-electromagnetic field generation to the structural dihesion of complex carbohydrate molecules.
Biography

Thorpe was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School where he excelled in the natural sciences. He is the only pupil in the history of the school to win the prestigious F.T. Matthews prizes in both Physics and Chemistry along with the Hans P. Uberman Trophy on three occasions. In light of Thorpe's achievements, the school presents the "Stephen M. Thorpe Prize for Scientific Excellence" each year to the pupil with the best cumulative marks in the science subjects at A level.

He read Natural Sciences at at the University of Cambridge, impressing his tutors with his almost intuitive grasp of most areas of theoretical physics. But however brilliant and voracious his appetite for theory, the practical side of the subject was never to Thorpe's tastes. A freak laboratory accident in which a colleague lost an eye put him off this side of physics for life. He was to devote the remainder of his academic career to his beloved electromagnetism.

Thorpe was a member of a team called "Cleopatra" competing in the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs program, in the 2003-2004 competition. The company was set up to take advantage of Thorpe's expertise in the field of polymer manipulation; its business model pioneered a revolutionary design of walk-in bath suitable for mass production.

Thorpe graduated with the highest honours in 2003 and studied for a PhD in Natural Sciences. His postgraduate research paper "On the Application of Electromagnetic Induction to Polymer Theory" is pending recognition. It has been translated into 20 languages, and was nominated for a New Scientist award in 2006. The eventual winner of this prize was a joint paper by Ram Saran and Colin N. Wrigley entitled "Vector Analysis in Simple Harmonic Motion".

This loss to a paper widely considered inferior embittered Thorpe, who was later to claim that partnerships were in breach of the rules laid down in advance. This was disputed by the governing body, whose defence was that the rules were legally changed shortly before entries stopped being accepted. Later they were to admit, under pressure from the scientific community, that the sole authorship criterion was rescinded after numerous papers were submitted under one name despite it being common knowledge that teams of scientists were behind the same project.

Work

Thorpe's main contribution to the academic arena came through his graduate thesis. His work on electromagnetic induction, while fresh and innovative, is mainly used for reference as an extended research paper, rather than a published undergraduate text. Following the Newtonian tradition, it was titled in Latin (although written in English): "Inductia Electrica Nova" (The New Electromagnetic Induction). It sets out a consistent theory for the behaviour of polymers at high kinetic states, as an expanded and slightly diluted version of his graduate thesis (above).

The paper gave rise to a conjecture known to the physics world as "Thorpe's Conjecture". Put briefly, this states that for any complex hydrocarbon C which undergoes electromagnetic induction following Lenz's Law in a field F, the kinetic energy of C will tend to a limit E. Thorpe conjectured that this limit was defined by an exponential polynomial, of degree congruent to the magnetic flux density of F. The conjecture was shown to be consistent with quantum theory for temperatures up to 20 megakelvin in 2007 by Ram Saran.

Thorpe is currently working on a popular science book called "The Field of Wheat: Electromagnetic Induction made Simple". It is intended for the non-specialist, as a light-hearted look at the theory behind this phenomenon, and is expected to be published in early 2009.

Index of Papers

* On the Application of Electromagnetic Induction to Polymer Theory, Stephen Thorpe, 2004 (Research Paper)

* The Mathematics of the New Electromagnetic Induction, Stephen Thorpe and Alexander Hudson, 2004. (Article, Cambridge Journal of Physics)

* Inductia Electrica Nova, Stephen Thorpe, 2005 (Research Paper)

* Lenz's Law: The Minus Sign that Changed the World, Stephen Thorpe, 2006. (Article, Cambridge Journal of Physics)

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