17 
On Friday, October 23rd, the Annual Conversazione was held 
to inaugurate the Session 1908-09. Mr. Walter Baily, Vice-Presi- 
dent, and Mrs. Baily received the members and their friends. 
Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, D.Sc., F.R.S. Vice- 
President, gave a lecture on ‘‘ Lord Kelvin’s Scientific Work,”’ 
illustrated with lantern slides. The subject, the lecturer said, was 
too vast to be treated adequately in the time at his disposal. Lord 
Kelvin for over sixty years continued to illuminate the broad fields 
of science he made his own. His life’s work was sufficient to make 
a reputation three times over. In his early years he was a leader 
in pure physics; in middle life his work in the application of 
physical science brought him popular renown; while in later 
years, in matters dealing with the constitution of matter, of the 
ether and of electricity, he was an ackowledged master. It was 
impossible for a present day student, brought up in modes of thought 
largely moulded by him, to appreciate fully his influence. One 
naturally inquired into the origin of such a man and tried to learn, 
if possible, whether such genius was due to inheritance. 
Lord Kelvin’s father (James Thomson) was himself a remarkable 
man. Son of a small farmer in County Down, of Lowland Scottish 
descent, with few advantages but his innate love of learning and 
especially of mathematics, he became Professor of Mathematics at 
Glasgow. His son William (Lord Kelvin) received his early educa- 
tion entirely from his father. So well was this given and so apt 
the pupil that William Thomson matriculated at Glasgow Uni- 
versity at the age of eleven. Lord Kelvin, then, never went to 
school. He at once made his mark in mathematics and physics. 
Though he maintained an interest in the classic authors to the end 
of his life, his bent was so strongly marked that his father sent 
him to Cambridge without having taken his degree at Glasgow. 
As an undergraduate of seventeen he revelled in abstruse mathe- 
matics, and at the end of his career at Cambridge came out Second 
Wrangler, being beaten by Parkinson, who had paid more attention 
} than Thomson to the art of being examined. That studies did 
not occupy his whole attention was shown by the fact that he 
rowed for Cambridge in the University Race of 1844, and that he 
helped to found the Cambridge University Musical Society, which 
still exists. After a few months spent under Regnault in Paris 
he returned, at the age of twenty-one, a master of mathematical 
physics. In the following year he was appointed to the Chair of 
Natural Philosophy at Glasgow, a professorship he continued to 
hold for fifty-three years. 
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