Editing Benjamin Thompson (section)

==Early years==
[[File:Coat of Arms of Benjamin Thompson.svg|175px|thumb|left|Coat of Arms of Benjamin Thompson]]
Thompson was born in rural [[Woburn, Massachusetts|Woburn]], in the [[Province of Massachusetts Bay]], on 26 March 1753; his [[Benjamin Thompson House|birthplace]] is preserved as a museum. He was educated mainly at the village school, although he sometimes walked almost ten miles to [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]] with the older [[Loammi Baldwin]] to attend lectures by Professor [[John Winthrop (1714-1779)|John Winthrop]] of [[Harvard College]]. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to John Appleton, a [[merchant]] of nearby [[Salem, Massachusetts|Salem]]. Thompson excelled at his trade, and coming in contact with refined and well educated people for the first time, adopted many of their characteristics including an interest in [[science]]. While recuperating in Woburn in 1769 from an injury, Thompson conducted his first experiments studying the nature of [[heat]] and began to correspond with Baldwin and others about them. Later that year he worked several months for a Boston shopkeeper and then apprenticed himself briefly, and unsuccessfully, to a doctor in Woburn.
[[File:Benjamin Thompson Statue in Woburn Massachusetts.jpg|thumb|Statue of Benjamin Thompson in Woburn Massachusetts]]
Thompson's prospects were dim in 1772 but in that year they changed abruptly. He met, charmed and married a rich and well-connected widow, an heiress named Sarah Rolfe ([[née]] Walker). Her father was a minister, and her late husband left her property at Rumford, [[Province of New Hampshire]], which is today in the modern city of [[Concord, New Hampshire|Concord]]. They moved to [[Portsmouth, New Hampshire|Portsmouth]], and through his wife's influence with the governor, he was appointed a major in the [[New Hampshire Militia]]. Their child (also named [[Sarah Thompson, Countess Rumford|Sarah]]) was born in 1774.<ref>Gribbin, John.  ''The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors''.  New York, Random House, 2002. p. 301.</ref>

[[Image:Count Rumford.jpg|right|thumb|Painting by [[Thomas Gainsborough]] 1783]]