24 
THOMAS GRAY. 
Dr. Thomas Gray, a member of the Indiana Academy of Science since 
1888, was President in 1897-8, died in Terre Haute, Ind., December 19, 
1908. 
He was born in Lochgelly, Scotland, February 4, 1850, received his 
early education in the schools of the district and, after serving an 
apprenticeship in handicraft, entered the University of Glasgow, gradu- 
ating from the Mechanical Engineering course, with high honors, in 1874. 
After graduation he became Research Assistant to Lord Kelvin (Sir Will- 
iam Thompson). His work lay especially in the direction of absolute 
measurements in electricity and magnetism, electrical and heat conductiv- 
ity of glasses of various compositions and the variation in conductivity 
of metals under stress. In 1878 he became Professor of Telegraph Engi- 
neering in the University of Tokio, Japan. While there he became in- 
terested in earthquake phenomena and invented several seismographs and 
investigated the elastic constants of many rocks. In 1881 he returned to 
Scotland, becoming Lord Kelvin’s personal assistant, undertaking investi- 
gations in connection with practical problems in electricity then coming 
to the front. He developed and investigated methods for electrolytic 
measurements of electric currents and largely designed the well known 
Kelvin balances. He was Lord Kelvin’s and Flemming Jenkins’ repre- 
sentative as engineer for the Commercial Cable Companies and _ super- 
vised the laying of the Bennett-Mackay transatlantic cables. In 1888 he 
came to Terre Haute, Ind., as professor of dynamic engineering in the 
Rose Polytechnic Institute, which position he held until his death. His 
investigational work was bow mainly of an engineering character, too 
well known to recount. He was the author of several important works, 
the best known perhaps being the Smithsonian Physical Tables. The 
articles in the Encyclopedia Brittanica on telegraphs and telephones were 
from his pen. He also edited the definitions in electricity and magnetism 
for the Century Dictionary. He was the author of about sixty papers on 
scientific subjects, communicated to engineering societies and scientific 
journals. He was a member of most of the American scientific and engi- 
