Career
He is best known for the invention of the Wilberforce pendulum, which exhibits a curious motion in which periods of purely rotational oscillation gradually alternate with periods of purely up and down oscillation. Lionel Robert Wilberforce was born in in Munich Bavaria to his mother Fanny Flash and his father who was Edward Wilberforce (1834–1914). Edward was a grandson of William Wilberforce through Robert Wilberforce.
He was educated in England and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1884.
He worked with J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and was appointed lecturer in 1900. In the same year he became professor of physics at University College, Liverpool (later University of Liverpool).
He retired from this position in 1935.
