THE CHAIR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AT GLASGOW. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FIRST
PHYSICAL LABORATORY
The incumbent of the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of
Glasgow, Professor Meikleham, had been in failing health for several
years, and from 1842 to 1845 his duties had been discharged by another
member of the Thomson gens, Mr. David Thomson, B.A., of Trinity College,
Cambridge, afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen. Dr.
Meikleham died in May 1846, and the Faculty thereafter proceeded on the
invitation of Dr. J. P. Nichol, the Professor of Astronomy, to consider
whether in consequence of the great advances of physical science during
the preceding quarter of a century it was not urgently necessary to
remodel the arrangements for the teaching of natural philosophy in the
University. The advance of science had indeed been very great. Oersted
and Ampère, Henry and Faraday and Regnault, Gauss and Weber, had made
discoveries and introduced quantitative ideas, which had changed the
whole aspect of experimental and mathematical physics. The electrical
discoveries of the time reacted on the other branches of natural
philosophy, and in no small degree on mathematics itself. As a result
the progress of that period has continued and has increased in
rapidity, until now the accumulated results, for the most part already
united in the grasp of rational theory, have gone far beyond the power
of any single man to follow, much less to master.
It is interesting to look into a course of lectures such as were usually
delivered in the universities a hundred years ago by the Professor of
Natural Philosophy. We find a little discussion of mechanics,
hydrostatics and pneumatics, a little heat, and a very little optics.
Electricity and magnetism, which in our day have a literature far
exceeding that of the whole of physics only sixty years ago, could
hardly be said to exist. The professor of the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when Lord Kelvin's predecessor was appointed,
apparently found himself quite free to devote a considerable part of
each lecture to reflections on the beauties of nature, and to rhetorical
flights fitter for the pulpit than for the physics lecture-table.
In the intervening time the form and fashion of scientific lectures has
entirely changed, and the change is a testimony to the progress of
science. It is visible even in the design of the apparatus. Microscopes,
for example, have a perfection and a power undreamed of by our
great-grandfathers, and they are supported on stands which lack the
ornamentation of that bygone time, but possess stability and
convenience. Everything and everybody--even the professor, if that be
possible--must be business-like; and each moment of time must be
utilised in experiments for demonstration, not for applause, and in
brief and cogent statements of theory and fact. To waste time in talk
that is not to the point is criminal. But withal there is need of grace
of expression and vividness of description, of clearness of exposition,
of imagination, even of poetical intuition: but the stern beauty of
modern science is only disfigured by the old artificial adornments and
irrelevancies.
This is the tone and temper of science at the present day: the task is
immense, the time is short. And sixty years since some tinge of the same
cast of thought was visible in scientific workers and teachers. The
Faculty agreed with Dr. Nichol that there was need to bring physical
teaching and equipment into line with the state of science at the time;
but they wisely decided to do nothing until they had appointed a
Professor of Natural Philosophy who would be able to advise them fully
and in detail. They determined, however, to make the appointment subject
to such alterations in the arrangements of the department as they might
afterwards find desirable.
On September 11, 1846, the Faculty met, and having considered the
resolutions which had been proposed by Dr. Nichol, resolved to the
effect that the appointment about to be made should not prejudice the
right of the Faculty to originate or support, during the incumbency of
the new professor, such changes in the arrangements for conducting
instruction in physical science as it might be expedient to adopt, and
that this resolution should be communicated to the candidate elected.
The minute then runs: "The Faculty having deliberated on the respective
qualifications of the gentlemen who have announced themselves candidates
for this chair, and the vote having been taken, it carried unanimously
in favour of Mr. William Thomson, B.A., Fellow of St. Peter's College,
Cambridge, and formerly a student of this University, who is
accordingly declared to be duly elected: and Mr. Thomson being within
call appeared in Faculty, and the whole of this minute having been read
to him he agreed to the resolution of Faculty above recorded and
accepted the office." It was also resolved as follows: "The Faculty
hereby prescribe Mr. Thomson an essay on the subject, _De caloris
distributione per terræ corpus_, and resolve that his admission be on
Tuesday the 13th October, provided that he shall be found qualified by
the Meeting and shall have taken the oath and made the subscriptions
which are required by law."
At that time, and down to within the last fifteen years, every
professor, before his induction to his chair, had to submit a Latin
essay on some prescribed subject. This was almost the last relic of the
customs of the days when university lectures were delivered in Latin, a
practice which appears to have been first broken through by Adam Smith
when Professor of Moral Philosophy. Whatever it may have been in the
eighteenth century, the Latin essay at the end of the nineteenth was
perhaps hardly an infallible criterion of the professor-elect's
Latinity, and it was just as well to discard it. But fifty years before,
and for long after, classical languages bulked largely in the curriculum
of every student of the Scottish Universities, and it is undoubtedly the
case that most of those who afterwards came to eminence in other
departments of learning had in their time acquitted themselves well in
the old _Litteræ Humaniores_. This was true, as we have seen, of
Thomson, and it is unlikely that the form of his inaugural dissertation
cost him much more effort than its matter.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR WILLIAM THOMSON, 1846]
The subject chosen had reference no doubt to the papers on the theory
of heat which Mr. Thomson had already published. The thesis was
presented to the Faculty on the day appointed, and approved, and Mr.
Thomson having produced a certificate of his having taken the oaths to
government, and promised to subscribe the formula of the Church of
Scotland as required by law, on the first convenient opportunity, "the
following oath was then administered to him, which he took and
subscribed: _Ego, Gulielmus Thomson, B.A., physicus professor in hac
Academia designatus, promitto sancteque polliceor me in munere mihi
demandato studiose fideliterque versaturum._" Professor Thomson was then
"solemnly admitted and received by all the Members present, and took his
seat as a Member of Faculty."
No translation of this essay was ever published, but its substance was
contained in various papers which appeared later. The following
reference to it is made in an introduction attached to Article XI of his
_Mathematical and Physical Papers_ (vol. i, 1882).
"An application to Terrestrial Temperature, of the principle set forth
in the first part of this paper relating to the age of thermal
distributions, was made the subject of the author's Inaugural
Dissertation on the occasion of his induction to the professorship of
Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, in October 1846, '_De
Motu Caloris per Terræ Corpus_'[11]: which, more fully developed
afterwards, gave a very decisive limitation to the possible age of the
earth as a habitation for living creatures; and proved the untenability
of the enormous claims for TIME which, uncurbed by physical science,
geologists and biologists had begun to make and to regard as
unchallengeable. See 'Secular Cooling of the Earth, Geological Time,'
and several other Articles below." Some statement of the argument for
this limitation will be given later. [See Chap. XIV.]
Thomson thus entered at the age of twenty-five on what was to be his
life work as a teacher, investigator, and inventor. For he continued in
office fifty-three years, so that the united tenures of his predecessor
and himself amounted to only four years less than a century! He took up
his duties at the opening of the college session in November, and
promptly called the attention of the Faculty to the deficiencies of the
equipment of apparatus, which had been allowed to fall behind the times,
and required to have added to it many new instruments. A committee was
appointed to consider the question and report, and as a result of the
representations of this committee a sum of £100 was placed at Professor
Thomson's disposal to supply his most pressing needs. In the following
years repeated applications for further grants were made and various
sums were voted--not amounting to more than £500 or £600 in all--which
were apparently regarded as (and no doubt were, considering the times
and the funds at the disposal of the Faculty) a liberal provision for
the teaching of physical science. A minute of the Faculty, of date Nov.
26, 1847, is interesting.
After "emphatically deprecating" all idea that such large annual
expenditure for any one department was to be regularly contemplated, the
committee refer in their report to the "inadequate condition of the
department in question," and express their satisfaction "with the
reasonable manner in which the Professor of Natural Philosophy has on
all occasions readily modified his demands in accordance with the
economical suggestions of the committee." They conclude by saying that
they "view his ardour and anxiety in the prosecution of his profession
with the greatest pleasure," and "heartily concur in those anticipations
of his future celebrity which Monsr. Serville,[12] the French
mathematician, has recently thought fit to publish to the scientific
world."
Again, in April 1852, the Faculty agree to pay a sum of £137 6_s._
1½_d._ as the price of purchases of philosophical apparatus already
made, and approve of a suggestion of the committee that the expenditure
on this behalf during the next year should not exceed £50, and "they
desire that the purchases shall be made so far as is possible with the
previously obtained concurrence of the committee." It is easy to imagine
that the ardent young Professor of Natural Philosophy found the
leisurely methods of his older colleagues much too slow, and in his
enthusiasm anticipated consent to his demands by ordering his new
instruments without waiting for committees and meetings and reports.
In an address at the opening of the Physical and Chemical Laboratories
of the University College of North Wales, on February 2, 1885, Sir
William Thomson (as he was then) referred to his early equipment and
work as follows: "When I entered upon the professorship of Natural
Philosophy at Glasgow, I found apparatus of a very old-fashioned kind.
Much of it was more than a hundred years old, little of it less than
fifty years old, and most of it was worm-eaten. Still, with such
appliances, year after year, students of natural philosophy had been
brought together and taught as well as possible. The principles of
dynamics and electricity had been well illustrated and well taught, as
well taught as lectures and so imperfect apparatus--but apparatus merely
of the lecture-illustration kind--could teach. But there was absolutely
no provision of any kind for experimental investigation, still less
idea, even, for anything like students' practical work. Students'
laboratories for physical science were not then thought of."[13]
It appears that the class of Natural Philosophy (there was then as a
rule only one class in any subject, though supplementary work was done
in various ways) met for systematic lectures at 9 a.m., which is the
hour still adhered to, and for what was called "Experimental Physics" at
8 p.m.!
The _University Calendar_ for 1863-4 states that "the Natural Philosophy
Class meets two hours daily, 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. The first hour is
chiefly spent in statements of Principles, description of Results of
Observation, and Experimental Illustrations. The second hour is devoted
to Mathematical Demonstrations and Exercises, and Examinations on all
parts of the Course.
"The Text Books to be used are: 'Elements of Dynamics' (first part now
ready), Printed by George Richardson, University Printer. 'Elements of
Natural Philosophy,' by Professors W. Thomson and P. G. Tait (Two
Treatises to be published before November. Macmillan.[14])
"The shorter of the last mentioned Treatises will be used for the work
required of all students of Natural Philosophy in the regular
curriculum. The whole or specified parts of the larger Treatise will be
prescribed in connection with voluntary examinations and exercises in
the Class, and for candidates for the degree of M.A. with honours.
Students who desire to undertake these higher parts of the business of
the class, ought to be well prepared on all the subjects of the Senior
Mathematical Class.
"The Laboratory in connection with the class is open daily from 9 a.m.
to 4 p.m. for Experimental Exercises and Investigations, under the
direction of the Professor and his official assistant."
In 1847 the meetings for experimental physics were changed to 11 a.m.
The hour 9 a.m. is still (1908) retained for the regular meetings of the
ordinary class, and 11 a.m. for meetings held twice a week for exercises
and tutorial work, attendance at which is optional.
[A second graduating class has now been instituted and is very largely
attended. Each student attends three lectures and spends four hours in
the laboratory each week. A higher class, in two divisions, is also
held.]
At an early date in his career as a professor Thomson called in the aid
of his students for experimental research. In many directions the
properties of matter still lay unexplored, and it was necessary to
obtain exact data for the perfecting of the theories of elasticity,
electricity and heat, which had been based on the researches of the
first half of the nineteenth century. To the authors of these
theories--Gauss, Green, Cauchy and others--he was a fit successor. Not
knowing all that had been done by these men of genius, he reinvented,
as we have seen, some of their great theorems, and in somewhat later
work, notably in electricity and magnetism, set the theories on a new
basis cleared of all extraneous and unnecessary matter, and reduced the
hypotheses and assumptions to the smallest possible number, stated with
the most careful precautions against misunderstanding. As this work was
gradually accomplished the need for further experiment became more and
more clearly apparent. Accordingly he established at the old College in
the High Street, what he has justly claimed was the first physical
laboratory for students.[15] An old wine-cellar in the basement
adjoining the Natural Philosophy Class-room was first annexed, and was
the scene of early researches, which were to lead to much of the best
work of the present time. To this was added a little later the
Blackstone Examination-room, which, disused and "left unprotected," was
added to the wine-cellar, and gave space for the increasing corps of
enthusiastic workers who came under the influence of the new teacher,
and were eager to be associated with his work. A good many of the
researches which were carried out in this meagre accommodation in the
old College will be mentioned in what follows.
[Illustration: INNER COURT OF THE OLD COLLEGE
Showing Natural Philosophy Rooms]
[In the view of the inner court of the Old College given opposite, the
windows on the ground-floor to the right of the turret in front, are
those of the Blackstone Examination-room, which formed a large part of
the new Physical Laboratory. The windows above these, on the second
floor, are those of the Apparatus-room of the Natural Philosophy
Department. Between the turret on the right of the picture and the angle
of the court are the windows of the Natural Philosophy Class-room. The
attic above the Apparatus-room was at a later time occupied by the
Engineering Department, under Professor Macquorn Rankine.]
Here again we may quote from the Bangor address:
"Soon after I entered my present chair in the University of Glasgow in
1846 I had occasion to undertake some investigations of electrodynamic
qualities of matter, to answer questions suggested by the results of
mathematical theory, questions which could only be answered by direct
experiment. The labour of observing proved too heavy, much of it could
scarcely be carried on without two or more persons, working together. I
therefore invited students to aid in the work. They willingly accepted
the invitation, and lent me most cheerful and able help. Soon after,
other students, hearing that their class-fellows had got experimental
work to do, came to me and volunteered to assist in the investigation. I
could not give them all work in the particular investigation with which
I had commenced--'the electric convection of heat'--for want of means
and time and possibilities of arrangement, but I did all in my power to
find work for them on allied subjects (Electrodynamic Properties of
Metals, Moduluses of Elasticity of Metals, Elastic Fatigue, Atmospheric
Electricity, etc.). I then had an ordinary class of a hundred students,
of whom some attended lectures in natural philosophy two hours a day,
and had nothing more to do from morning till night. These were the balmy
days of natural philosophy in the University of Glasgow--the
pre-Commissional days. But the majority of the class really had very
hard work, and many of them worked after class-hours for self-support.
Some were engaged in teaching, some were city-missionaries, intending to
go into the Established Church of Scotland or some other religious
denomination of Scotland, or some of the denominations of Wales, for I
always had many Welsh students. In those days, as now, in the Scottish
Universities all intending theological students took a 'philosophical
curriculum'--'zuerst collegium logicum,' then moral philosophy, and
(generally last) natural philosophy. Three-fourths of my volunteer
experimentalists used to be students who entered the theological classes
immediately after the completion of the philosophical curriculum. I well
remember the surprise of a great German professor when he heard of this
rule and usage: 'What! do the theologians learn physics?' I said, 'Yes,
they all do; and many of them have made capital experiments. I believe
they do not find that their theology suffers at all from (their) having
learned something of mathematics and dynamics and experimental physics
before they enter upon it.'"
This statement, besides throwing an interesting light on the conditions
of university work sixty years ago, gives an illustration of the wide
interpretation in Scotland of the term Arts. Here it has meant, since
the Chair of Natural Philosophy was founded in 1577, and held by one of
the Regents of the University, _Artes Liberales_ in the widest sense,
that is, the study of _Litteræ Humaniores_ (including mental and moral
philosophy) and physical and mathematical science. These were all deemed
necessary for a liberal education at that time: in the scientific age in
which we live it is more imperative than ever that neither should be
excluded from the Arts curriculum of our Universities. The common
distinction between Arts and Science is a false one, and the product of
a narrow idea which is alien to the traditions of our northern
Universities.
It is to be noted, however, that the laboratory thus founded was
essentially a research laboratory; it was not designed for the
systematic instruction of students in methods of experimenting.
Laboratories for this purpose came later, and as a natural consequence.
But for the best students, ill prepared as, no doubt, some of them were
for the work of research, the experience gained in such a laboratory was
very valuable. They learned--and, indeed, had to learn--in an incidental
manner how to determine physical constants, such as specific gravities,
thermal capacities, electric resistances, and so forth. For, apart from
the _Relations des Expériences_ of Regnault, and the magnetic and
electric work of Gauss and Weber, there was no systematised body of
information available for the guidance of students. Good students could
branch out from the main line of inquiry, so as to acquire skill in
subsidiary determinations of this kind; to the more easily daunted
student such difficulties proved formidable, and often absolutely
deterrent.
It is not easy for a physicist of the present day to realise the state
of knowledge of the time, and so he often fails to recognise the full
importance of Thomson's work. The want of precise knowledge of physical
constants was to a considerable extent a consequence of the want of
exact definitions of quantities to be determined, and in a much greater
degree of the lack of any system of units of measurement. The study of
phenomena was in the main merely qualitative; where an attempt had been
made to obtain quantitative determinations, the units employed were
arbitrary and dependent on apparatus in the possession of the
experimenter, and therefore unavailable to others. In the department of
heat, as has been said, a great beginning had been made by Regnault, in
whose hands the exact determination of physical constants had become a
fine art.
In electricity and magnetism there were already the rudiments of
quantitative measurement. But it was only long after, when the actions
of magnets and of electric currents had been much further studied, that
the British Association entered on its great work of setting up a system
of absolute units for the measurement of such actions. Up till then the
resistance, for example, of a piece of wire, to the passage of an
electric current along it, was expressed by some such specification as
that it was equal to the resistance of a certain piece of copper wire in
the experimenter's possession. It was therefore practically impossible
for experimenters elsewhere to profit by the information. And so in
other cases. An example from Thomson's papers on the "Dynamical Theory
of Heat" may be cited here, though it refers to a time (1851) when some
progress towards obtaining a system of absolute units had been made. In
§ 118 (Art. XLVIII) he states that the electromotive force of a
thermoelectric couple of copper and bismuth, at temperatures 0° C. and
100° C. of its functions, might be estimated from a comparison made by
Pouillet of the strength of the current sent by this electromotive force
through a copper wire 20 metres long and 1 millimetre in diameter, with
the strength of a current decomposing water at a certain rate, were it
not that the specific resistances of different specimens of copper are
found to differ considerably from one another. Hence, though an estimate
is made, it is stated that, without experiments on the actual wire used
by Pouillet, it was impossible to arrive at an accurate result. Now if
it had been in Pouillet's power to determine accurately the resistance
of his circuit in absolute units, there would have been no difficulty in
the matter, and his result would have been immediately available for the
estimate required.
When submarine cables came to be manufactured and laid all this had to
be changed. For they were expensive; an Atlantic cable, for example,
cost half a million sterling. The state of the cable had to be
ascertained at short intervals during manufacture; a similar watch had
to be kept upon it during the process of laying, and afterwards during
its life of telegraphic use. The observations made by one observer had
therefore to be made available to all, so that, with other instruments
and at another place, equivalent observations could be made and their
results quantitatively compared with those of the former. To set up a
system of measurement for such purposes as these involved much
theoretical discussion and an enormous amount of experimental
investigation. This was undertaken by a special committee of the
Association, and a principal part in furnishing discussions of theory
and in devising experimental methods was taken by Thomson. The
committee's investigations took place at a date somewhat later in
Thomson's career than that with which we are here dealing, and some
account of them will be given in a later chapter; but much work,
preparatory for and leading up to the determination of electrical
standards, was done by the volunteer laboratory corps in the transformed
wine-cellar of the old College.
The selection and realisation of electrical standards was a work of
extraordinary importance to the world from every point of
view--political, commercial, and social. It not only rendered
applications of electricity possible in the arts and industries, but by
relieving experimental results from the vagueness of the specifications
formerly in use, made the further progress of pure electrical science a
matter in which every step forward, taken by an individual worker,
facilitated the advance of all. But like other toilsome services, the
nature of which is not clear to the general public, it has never
received proper acknowledgment from those who have profited by it. If
Thomson had done nothing more than the work he did in this connection,
first with his students and later with the British Association
Committee, he would have deserved well of his fellow-countrymen.
When Professor Thomson was entering on the duties of his chair, and
calling his students to his aid, the discoveries of Faraday on the
induction of currents by the motion of magnets in the neighbourhood of
closed circuits of wire, or, what comes to the same thing, the motion of
such circuits in the "fields" of magnets, had not been long given to the
world, and were being pondered deeply by natural philosophers. The time
was ripe for a quantitative investigation of current induction, like
that furnished by the genius of Ampère after the discovery by Oersted of
the deflection of a magnet by an electric current. Such an investigation
was immensely facilitated by Faraday's conception of lines of magnetic
force, the cutting of which by the wire of the circuit gave rise to the
induced current. Indeed, the mathematical ideas involved were indicated,
and not obscurely, by Faraday himself. But to render the mathematical
theory explicit, and to investigate and test its consequences, required
the highest genius. This work was accomplished in great measure by
Thomson, whose presentation of electrodynamic theory helped Maxwell to
the view that light was an affair of the propagation of electric and
magnetic vibrations in an insulating medium, the light-carrying ether.
Another investigation on which he had already entered in 1847 was of
great importance, not only for pure science but for the development and
proper economy of all industrial operations. The foundations on which a
dynamical theory of heat was to be raised had been partly laid by Carnot
and were being completed on the experimental side by James Prescott
Joule, whom Thomson met in 1847 at the meeting of the British
Association at Oxford. The meeting at Oxford in 1860 is memorable to the
public at large, mainly on account of the discussion which took place on
the Darwinian theory, and the famous dialectic encounter between Bishop
Wilberforce and Professor Huxley; the Oxford meeting of 1894 will always
be associated with the announcement of the discovery of argon by Lord
Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay: the meeting of 1847 might quite as
worthily be remembered as that at which Joule laid down, with numerical
exactitude, the first law of thermodynamics. Joule brought his
experimental results before the Mathematical and Physical Section at
that meeting; and it appears probable that they would have received
scant attention had not their importance been forcibly pointed out by
Thomson. Communications thereafter passed frequently between the two
young physicists, and there soon began a collaboration of great value to
science, and a friendship which lasted till the death of Joule in 1884.
[See p. 88 below.]
We shall devote the next few chapters to an account, as free from
technicalities as possible, of these great divisions of Thomson's
earlier original work as professor at Glasgow.