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ENGLISH MEN OF SCIENCE
EDITED BY
J. REYNOLDS GREEN, Sc.D.
LORD KELVIN
ENGLISH MEN
OF SCIENCE
EDITED BY
DR. J. REYNOLDS GREEN.
_With Photogravure Frontispiece._
_Small Cr. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net per vol._
SPENCER. By J. ARTHUR THOMPSON.
PRIESTLEY. By Dr. THORPE, C.B., F.R.S.
FLOWER. By Prof. R. LYDEKKER, F.R.S.
HUXLEY. By Prof. AINSWORTH DAVIS.
BENTHAM. By B. DAYDON JACKSON, F.L.S.
DALTON. By J. P. MILLINGTON, M.A.
_J. M. DENT & CO._
_All Rights Reserved_
[Illustration: Lord Kelvin]
LORD KELVIN
_AN ACCOUNT OF HIS SCIENTIFIC LIFE AND WORK_
BY
ANDREW GRAY
LL.D., F.R.S., V.-P.R.S.E.
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY
J. M. DENT & CO., AND IN NEW
YORK BY E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1908
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE
This book makes no claim to be a biography of Lord Kelvin in the usual
sense. It is an extension of an article which appeared in the _Glasgow
Herald_ for December 19, 1907, and has been written at the suggestion
of various friends of Lord Kelvin, in the University of Glasgow and
elsewhere, who had read that article. The aim of the volume is to give
an account of Lord Kelvin's life of scientific activity, and to explain
to the student, and to the general reader who takes an interest in
physical science and its applications, the nature of his discoveries.
Only such a statement of biographical facts as seems in harmony with
this purpose is attempted. But I have ventured, as an old pupil and
assistant of Lord Kelvin, to sketch here and there the scene in his
class-room and laboratory, and to record some of the incidents of his
teaching and work.
I am under obligations to the proprietors of the _Glasgow Herald_ for
their freely accorded permission to make use of their article, and to
Messrs. Annan, photographers, Glasgow, and Messrs. James MacLehose &
Sons, Glasgow, for the illustrations which are given, and which I hope
may add to the interest of the book.
A. GRAY.
_The University_, _Glasgow_,
_May_ 20, 1908.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. PARENTAGE AND EARLY EDUCATION 1
II. CLASSES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. FIRST SCIENTIFIC
PAPERS 13
III. UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. SCIENTIFIC WORK AS UNDERGRADUATE 23
IV. THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF ELECTRICITY IN EQUILIBRIUM.
ELECTRIC IMAGES. ELECTRIC INVERSION 33
V. THE CHAIR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AT GLASGOW. ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE FIRST PHYSICAL LABORATORY 61
VI. FRIENDSHIP WITH STOKES AND JOULE. EARLY WORK AT GLASGOW 79
VII. THE 'ACCOUNT OF CARNOT'S THEORY OF THE MOTIVE POWER OF
HEAT'--TRANSITION TO THE DYNAMICAL THEORY OF HEAT 99
VIII. THERMODYNAMICS AND ABSOLUTE THERMOMETRY 114
IX. HYDRODYNAMICS--DYNAMICAL THEOREM OF MINIMUM
ENERGY--VORTEX MOTION 153
X. THE ENERGY THEORY OF ELECTROLYSIS--ELECTRICAL
UNITS--ELECTRICAL OSCILLATIONS 176
XI. THOMSON AND TAIT'S 'NATURAL PHILOSOPHY'--GYROSTATIC
ACTION--'ELECTROSTATICS AND MAGNETISM' 194
XII. THE AGE OF THE EARTH 229
XIII. BRITISH ASSOCIATION COMMITTEE ON ELECTRICAL STANDARDS 244
XIV. THE BALTIMORE LECTURES 254
XV. SPEED OF TELEGRAPH SIGNALLING--LAYING OF SUBMARINE
CABLES--TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENTS--NAVIGATIONAL
INSTRUMENTS, COMPASS AND SOUNDING MACHINE 264
XVI. LORD KELVIN IN HIS CLASS-ROOM AND LABORATORY 279
XVII. PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES--HONOURS AND DISTINCTIONS--LAST
ILLNESS AND DEATH 299
CONCLUSION 305
INDEX 317
CORRIGENDUM
Page 105, line 9 from foot, for ∂e + O read ∂e + o
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face page_
LORD KELVIN (photogravure) _Frontispiece_
LORD KELVIN IN 1846 64
VIEW OF OLD COLLEGE 70
LORD KELVIN
CHAPTER I
PARENTAGE AND EARLY EDUCATION
Lord Kelvin came of a stock which has helped to give to the north of
Ireland its commercial and industrial supremacy over the rest of that
distressful country. His ancestors were county Down agriculturists of
Scottish extraction. His father was James Thomson, the well-known
Glasgow Professor of Mathematics, and author of mathematical text-books
which at one time were much valued, and are even now worth consulting.
James Thomson was born on November 13, 1786, near Ballynahinch, county
Down. Being the son of a small farmer he was probably unable to enter on
university studies at the usual age, for he did not matriculate in
Scotland until 1810. The class-lists of the time show that he
distinguished himself highly in mathematics, natural philosophy, and
classics.
An interesting incident of these student days of his father was related
by Lord Kelvin in his installation address as Chancellor of the
University in 1904, and is noteworthy as indicating how comparatively
recent are many of the characteristics of our present-day life and
commerce. James Thomson and some companions, walking from Greenock to
Glasgow, on their way to join the college classes at the commencement of
the session, "saw a prodigy--a black chimney moving rapidly beyond a
field on the left-hand side of their road. They jumped the fence, ran
across the field, and saw, to their astonishment, Henry Bell's 'Comet'
(then not a year old) travelling on the Clyde between Glasgow and
Greenock."[1] Sometimes then the passage from Belfast to Greenock took a
long time. Once James Thomson, crossing in an old lime-carrying smack,
was three or four days on the way, in the course of which the vessel,
becalmed, was carried three times by the tide round Ailsa Craig.
Mr. Thomson was elected in 1815 to the Professorship of Mathematics in
the Royal Academical Institution of Belfast, and held the post for
seventeen years, building up for himself an excellent reputation as a
teacher, and as a clear and accurate writer. Just then analytical
methods were beginning to supersede the processes of geometrical
demonstration which the form adopted by Newton for the Principia had
tended to perpetuate in this country. Laplace was at the height of his
fame in France, and was writing the great analytical Principia, his
_Mécanique Céleste_, applying the whole force of his genius, and all the
resources of the differential and integral calculus invented by Newton
and improved by the mathematicians of the intervening century, to the
elucidation and extension of the "system of the world," which had been
so boldly sketched by the founder of modern physical science.
In that period Fourier wrote his memoirs on the conduction of heat, and
gave to the world his immortal book to be an inspiration to the physical
philosophers of succeeding generations. Legendre had written memoirs
which were to lead, in the hands of Jacobi and his successors, to a new
province of mathematics, while, in Germany, Gauss had begun his stately
march of discovery.
The methods and results of this period of mathematical activity were at
first hardly known in this country: the slavish devotion of Cambridge to
the geometrical processes and the fluxional notation of Newton, an
exclusive partiality which Newton himself would have been the first to
condemn, led analytical methods, equally Newtonian, to be stigmatised as
innovations, because clothed in the unfamiliar garb of the continental
notation. A revolt against this was led by Sir John Herschel, Woodhouse,
Peacock, and some others at Cambridge, who wrote books which had a great
effect in bringing about a change of methods. Sir John thus described
the effect of the new movements:--"Students at our universities,
fettered by no prejudices, entangled by no habits, and excited by the
ardour and emulation of youth, had heard of the existence of masses of
knowledge from which they were debarred by the mere accident of
position. They required no more. The prestige which magnifies what is
unknown, and the attractions inherent in what is forbidden, coincided in
their impulse. The books were procured and read, and produced their
natural effects. The brows of many a Cambridge examiner were elevated,
half in ire, half in admiration, at the unusual answers which began to
appear in examination papers. Even moderators are not made of
impenetrable stuff, though fenced with sevenfold Jacquier, and tough
bull-hide of Vince and Wood."
The memoirs and treatises of the continental analysts were eagerly
procured and studied by James Thomson, and as he was bound by no
examination traditions, he freely adopted their methods, so far as these
came within the scope of his teaching, and made them known to the
English reading public in his text-books. Hence when the chair of
Mathematics at Glasgow became vacant in 1832 by the death of Mr. James
Millar, Mr. Thomson was at once chosen by the Faculty, which at that
time was the electing body.
The Faculty consisted of the Principal and the Professors of Divinity,
Church History, Oriental Languages, Natural Philosophy, Moral
Philosophy, Mathematics, Logic, Greek, Humanity, Civil Law, Practice of
Medicine, Anatomy, and Practical Astronomy. It administered the whole
revenues and property of the College, and possessed the patronage of the
above-named chairs with the exception of Church History, Civil Law,
Medicine, Anatomy, and Astronomy, so that Mr. Thomson became not only
Professor of Mathematics, but also, in virtue of his office, a member of
what was really the supreme governing body of the University. The
members of the Faculty, with the exception of the Professor of
Astronomy, who resided at the observatory, were provided with official
residences in the College. This arrangement is still adhered to; though
now the government is in the hands of a University Court, with the
Senate (which formerly only met to confer degrees or to manage the
library and some other matters) to regulate and superintend teaching and
discipline.
Professor Thomson was by no means the first or the only professor of the
name in the University of Glasgow, as the following passage quoted from
a letter of John Nichol, son of Dr. J. P. Nichol, and first Professor of
English at Glasgow, amusingly testifies:--
"Niebuhr, after examining a portion of the _Fasti Consulares_, arrived
at the conclusion that the _senatus populusque Romanus_ had made a
compact to elect every year a member of the Fabian house to one of the
highest offices of state, so thickly are the records studded with the
name of the Fabii. Some future Niebuhr of the New Zealand Macaulay
imagines, turning his attention to the annals of Glasgow College, will
undoubtedly arrive at the conclusion that the leaders of that
illustrious corporation had, during the period of which I am writing,
become bound in a similar manner to the name of Thomson. Members of that
great gens filled one-half of the chairs in the University. I will not
venture to say how many I have known. There was Tommy Thomson the
chemist; William Thomson of Materia Medica; Allen Thomson of Anatomy,
brother of the last; Dr. James Thomson of Mathematics; William, his son,
etc., etc. Old Dr. James was one of the best of Irishmen, a good
mathematician, an enthusiastic and successful teacher, the author of
several valuable school-books, a friend of my father's, and himself the
father of a large family, the members of which have been prosperous in
the world. They lived near us in the court, and we made a pretty close
acquaintanceship with them all."
A former Professor of Natural Philosophy, Dr. Anderson,[2] who appears
to have lived the closing years of his life in almost constant warfare
with his colleagues of the Faculty, and who established science classes
for workmen in Glasgow, bequeathed a sum of money to set up a college in
Glasgow in which such classes might be carried on. The result was the
foundation of what used to be called the "Andersonian University" in
George Street, the precursor of the magnificent Technical College of the
present day. This name, and the large number of Thomsons who had been
and were still connected with the University of Glasgow, caused the more
ancient institution to be not infrequently referred to as the
"Thomsonian University"!
The Thomas Thomson (no relative of the Belfast Thomsons) affectionately,
if a little irreverently, mentioned in the above quotation, was then the
Professor of Chemistry. He was the first to establish a chemical
laboratory for students in this country; indeed, his laboratory preceded
that of Liebig at Giessen by some years, and it is probable that as
regards experimental chemistry Glasgow was then in advance of the rest
of the world. His pupil and life-long admirer was destined to establish
the first physical laboratory for such students as were willing to spend
some time in the experimental investigation and verification of physical
principles, or to help the professor in his researches. The systematic
instruction of students in methods of experimenting by practical
exercises with apparatus was a much later idea, and this fact must be
taken account of when the laboratories of the present time are
contrasted with the much more meagre provision of those early days. The
laboratory is now, as much as the lecture-room, the place where classes
are held and instruction given in experimental science to crowds of
students, and it is a change for the better.
The arrival of James Thomson and his family at Glasgow College, in 1832,
was remarked at the time as an event which brought a large reinforcement
to the gens already inseparably associated with the place: how great
were to be its consequences not merely to the University but to the
world at large nobody can then have imagined. His family consisted of
four sons and two daughters: his wife, Margaret Gardner, daughter of
William Gardner, a merchant in Glasgow, had died shortly before, and the
care of the family was undertaken by her sister, Mrs. Gall. The eldest
son, James Thomson, long after to be Rankine's successor in the Chair of
Engineering, was ten years of age and even then an inveterate inventor;
William, the future Lord Kelvin (born June 26, 1824), was a child of
eight. Two younger sons were John (born in 1826)--who achieved
distinction in Medicine, became Resident Assistant in the Glasgow Royal
Infirmary, and died there of a fever caught in the discharge of his
duty--and Robert, who was born in 1829, and died in Australia in 1905.
Besides these four sons there were in all three daughters:--Elizabeth,
afterwards wife of the Rev. David King, D.D.; Anna, who was married to
Mr. William Bottomley of Belfast (these two were the eldest of the
family), and Margaret, the youngest, who died in childhood. Thus began
William Thomson's residence in and connection with the University of
Glasgow, a connection only terminated by the funeral ceremony in
Westminster Abbey on December 23, 1907.
Professor Thomson himself carefully superintended the education of his
sons, which was carried out at home. They were well grounded in the old
classical languages, and moreover received sound instruction in what
even now are called, but in a somewhat disparaging sense, modern
subjects. As John Nichol has said in his letters, "He was a stern
disciplinarian, and did not relax his discipline when he applied it to
his children, and yet the aim of his life was their advancement."
It would appear from John Nichol's recollections that even in childhood
and youth, young James Thomson was an enthusiastic experimentalist and
inventor, eager to describe his ideas and show his models to a
sympathetic listener.[3] And both then and in later years his charming
simplicity, his devouring passion for accuracy of verbal expression in
all his scientific writing and teaching, and his unaffected and
unconscious genius for the invention of mechanical appliances, all based
on true and intuitively perceived physical principles, showed that if he
had had the unrelenting power of ignoring accessories and unimportant
details which was possessed by his younger brother, he might have
accomplished far more than he did, considerable as that was. But William
had more rapid decision, and though careful and exact in expressing his
meaning, was less influenced by considerations of the errors that might
arise from the various connotations of such scientific terms as are also
words in common use; and he quickly completed work which his brother
would have pondered over for a long time, and perhaps never finished.
It is difficult for a stranger to Glasgow, or even for a resident in
Glasgow in these days of quick and frequent communication with England,
and for that matter with all parts of the world, to form a true idea of
life and work at the University of Glasgow seventy years ago. The
University had then its home in the old "tounis colledge" in the High
Street, where many could have wished it to remain, and, extending its
buildings on College Green, retain the old and include the new. Its fine
old gateway, and part of one of the courts, were still a quaint
adornment of the somewhat squalid street in 1871, after the University
had moved to its present situation on the windy top of Gilmorehill.
Deserted as it was, its old walls told something of the history of the
past, and reminded the passer-by that learning had flourished amid the
shops and booths of the townspeople, and that students and professors
had there lived and worked within sound of the shuttle and the forge.
The old associations of a town or a street or a building, linked as they
often are with the history of a nation, are a valuable possession, not
always placed in the account when the advantages or disadvantages of
proposed changes are discussed; but a University which for four hundred
years has seen the tide of human life flow round it in a great city, is
instinct with memories which even the demolition of its walls can only
partially destroy. Poets and statesmen, men of thought and men of
action, lords and commoners, rich men's sons and the children of
farmers, craftsmen and labourers, had mingled in its classes and sat
together on its benches; and so had been brought about a community of
thought and feeling which the practice of our modern and wealthy
cosmopolites, who affect to despise nationality, certainly does nothing
to encourage. In the eighteenth century the Provosts and the Bailies of
the time still dwelt among men and women in the High Street, and its
continuation the Saltmarket, or not far off in Virginia Street, the home
of the tobacco lords and the West India merchants. Their homely
hospitality, their cautious and at the same time splendid generosity,
their prudent courage, and their faithful and candid friendships are
depicted in the pages of Scott; and though a change in men and manners,
not altogether for the better, has been gradually brought about by sport
and fashion, those peculiarly Scottish virtues are still to be found in
the civic statesmen and merchant princes of the Glasgow of to-day.
Seventy years ago the great migration of the well-to-do towards the west
had commenced, but it had but little interfered with the life of the
High Street or of the College. Now many old slums besides the Vennel and
the Havannah have disappeared, much to the credit of the Corporation of
Glasgow; and, alas, so has every vestige of the Old College, much to the
regret of all who remember its quaint old courts. A railway company, it
is to be supposed, dare not possess an artistic soul to be saved; and
therefore, perhaps, it is that it builds huge and ugly caravanserais of
which no one, except perhaps the shareholders, would keenly regret the
disappearance. But both artists and antiquaries would have blessed the
directors--and such a blessing would have done them no harm--if they had
been ingenious and pious enough to leave some relic of the old buildings
as a memorial of the old days and the old life of the High Street.
A picture of the College in the High Street has recently been drawn by
one who lived and worked in it, though some thirty years after James
Thomson brought his family to live in its courts. Professor G. G. Ramsay
has thus portrayed some features of the place, which may interest those
who would like to imagine the environment in which Lord Kelvin grew up
from childhood, until, a youth of seventeen, he left Glasgow for
Cambridge.[4] "There was something in the very disamenities of the old
place that created a bond of fellowship among those who lived and worked
there, and that makes all old students, to this day, look back to it
with a sort of family pride and reverence. The grimy, dingy, low-roofed
rooms; the narrow, picturesque courts, buzzing with student-life; the
dismal, foggy mornings and the perpetual gas; the sudden passage from
the brawling, huckstering High Street into the academic quietude, or the
still more academic hubbub, of those quaint cloisters, into which the
policeman, so busy outside, was never permitted to penetrate; the
tinkling of the 'angry bell' that made the students hurry along to the
door which was closed the moment that it stopped; the roar and the flare
of the Saturday nights, with the cries of carouse or incipient murder
which would rise into our quiet rooms from the Vennel or the Havannah;
the exhausted lassitude of Sunday mornings, when poor slipshod creatures
might be seen, as soon as the street was clear of churchgoers, sneaking
over to the chemist's for a dose of laudanum to ease off the debauch of
yesterday; the conversations one would have after breakfast with the old
ladies on the other side of the Vennel, not twenty feet from one's
breakfast-table, who divided the day between smoking short cutty pipes
and drinking poisonous black tea--these sharp contrasts bound together
the College folk and the College students, making them feel at once part
of the veritable populace of the city, and also hedged off from it by
separate pursuits and interests."
The university removed in 1871 to larger and more airily situated
buildings in the western part of the city. Round these have grown up, in
the intervening thirty-eight years, new buildings for most of the great
departments of science, including a separate Institute of Natural
Philosophy, which was opened in April 1907, by the Prince and Princess
of Wales.