THOMPSON, BENJAMIN (COUNT RUMFORD)
(b. Woburn, Massachusetts, 26 March 1753; d. Auteuil, France, 21 August 1814)

physics.

Thompson’s father, Benjamin Thompson, and his mother, Ruth Simonds, were small village farmers in New England. He had little formal schooling, educating himself by self-study with the help of friends and local clergymen. Taking up school-teaching, he moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where almost immediately (1772) he made an advantageous marriage with a wealthy widow, Sarah Walker Rolfe, fourteen years his senior. They had one child, Sarah, and permanently separated in 1775. Thompson soon came to the attention of the royal governor of New Hampshire, who commissioned him a major. He became an active Tory in the early part of the American Revolution. He fled to London after the fall of Boston and progressed rapidly in British government circles to become undersecretary of state for the colonies.