Samuel Jackson Barnett (14.12.1873-1956) was an American physicist. He was born in Woodson. He graduated from Cornell University (1898). He worked at the universities of Stanford (1900 — 05), Tulane (1905-11) and Ohio (1911-18), and at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1918-26). In 1926-44 he was professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
His work concerned the study of electric and magnetic phenomena, gyromagnetic effects and geomagnetism. In 1915 he discovered the phenomenon of the magnetisation of a ferromagnet when it is rotated about its axis in the absence of a magnetic field (the Barnett effect), and in 1931 he carried out the so-called inverted Tolman-Stewart experiment.