LIFE AND WORK OF LORD KELVIN THOMPSON". 747 



The effect of reading- Fourier dominated his whole career thence- 

 forward. He took the book with him for further study during a 

 three months' visit to Germany. During his last year (1840-41) at 

 Glasgow he communicated to the Cambridge Mathematical Journal, 

 under the signature " P. Q. R.," an original paper " On Fourier's 

 expansions of functions in trigonometrical series," which was a 

 defense of Fourier's deductions against some strictures of Professor 

 Kelland. He left Glasgow University after six years of study, 

 without even taking his degree, and on April 6, 1841, entered as a 

 student at St. Peter's College, Cambridge. Here he speedily made 

 his mark, and continued to contribute, at first anonymously, to the 

 Cambridge Mathematical Journal, papers inspired by his studies of 

 the higher mathematics and by his love for physics. The analogy 

 between the movement of heat in conductors along lines of flow and 

 across surfaces of unequal temperature, and the distribution of elec- 

 tricity on conductors in such a way that the lines of electric force 

 were crossed orthogonally by surfaces of equipotential, led to his 

 paper entitled " The uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid 

 bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of elec- 

 tricity." Here was an undergraduate of 17 handling methods of 

 difficult integration readily and with mastery, at an age when most 

 mathematical students are being assiduously drilled in so-called 

 " geometrical conies " and other dull and foolish devices for calculus 

 dodging. It is true he followed the courses of coaching prescribed by 

 his tutor, Hopkins, but he could not be kept to the routine of book 

 work and he never quite forgave Hopkins for keeping from him until 

 the last day of his residence at Cambridge Green's rare and remark- 

 able Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the 

 Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. He also formed a close 

 friendship with Stokes, then a young tutor, with whom, until his 

 death in 1902, he maintained a continual interchange of ideas and 

 suggestions in mathematical physics. Of Thomson's Cambridge 

 career so much has been written of late that it may be very briefly 

 touched here. How he went up for his Tripos in 1845 ; how he came 

 out second wrangler only, being beaten by the rapid Parkinson ; how 

 he beat Parkinson in the Smith's prize competition; how he rowed 

 for his college to save Peterhouse from being bumped by Caius in the 

 university races of 1843; how he won the Colquohoun silver sculls; 

 how he helped to found the Cambridge University Musical Society 

 and played the French horn in the little orchestra, which at its first 

 concert, on December 8, 1843, performed Haydn's First Symphony, 

 the Overture to Masaniello, the Overture to Semiramide, the Royal 

 Irish Quadrilles, and the Elizabethen Waltzes of Strauss ! But these 

 things — are they not written in the book of the Cambridge Chronicle? 



