Stone tablet of Sir Joseph Wilson Swan in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, on former Electricity Board building
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for developing and supplying the first incandescent lights used illuminate homes and public buildings, including the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1881.
In 1904, Swan was knighted by King Edward VII, awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal, and was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had received the highest decoration in France, the Legion of Honour, when he visited the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity, Paris. The exhibition included displays of his inventions, and the city was lit with his electric lighting.
Swan was the maternal grandfather of Christopher Morcom, Alan Turing’s close friend and first love during their studies at the Sherborne boarding school.