346 JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE. 



be truly said that the highest estimate of his moral excellence was 

 formed by those who were brought into closest intercourse with him. 



President Woolsey lived for eighteen years after he retired from 

 the position of head of the College. His closing days were clouded 

 with inlirmities. He died on the 1st of Julv, 1889. 



FOREIGN HONORARY MEMBER. 



JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE. 



James Pkescott Joule was born at Salford, near Manchester, 

 England, on December 2o, 1818, the second of five children.. As a 

 lad he was so delicate that he was not sent to school, but was taught at 

 home by tutors until he was about fifteen years of age, when he began 

 to work in his father's brewery ; and when the health of the father 

 declined, the business fell entirely into the hands of young Joule and 

 his brother Benjamin. The business made some knowledge of chem- 

 istry a necessity, and the two brothers were sent to Dalton, one of the 

 most distinguished chemists that ever lived, to acquire it. Dalton at 

 that time was President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical 

 Society, living and taking pupils at the Society's house in Manches- 

 ter. The boys were taught arithmetic, algebra, and geometry at first, 

 and afterwards natural philosophy and chemistry. For a text-book 

 in chemistry Dalton used his own " New System of Chemical Phi- 

 losophy." In 1837 Dalton's health became impaired so that he no 

 longer received pupils, and it does not appear that Joule had any fur- 

 ther school instruction. Dalton had introduced to his pupil physical 

 and chemical apparatus, and had evidently taught him in some degree 

 the art of experimentation. It is evident, too, that Joule was an apt 

 scholar in that direction, for he at once began to experiment on his 

 own account. He appropriated a room in his father's house, and en- 

 larged his stock of apparatus mostly by his own constructions. There 

 he began, in 1838, before he was twenty years of age, a series of in- 

 vestigations continued through his life, which for ingenuity, thorough- 

 ness, and scientific importance have not been exceeded by any one in 

 this century. About an hundred titles of papers by him alone are on 

 the list of the Royal Society of Great Britain, and twenty in conjunc- 

 tion with Thomson, Playfair, and Scoresby. 



A distinguishing feature of the whole of Joule's work is his aim 

 for quantitative results. His first work appears to have been upon 



