548 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



When 12 years old Dewar, still a pale and delicate boy, went to 

 the Dollar Academy, a Scottish secondary school of high repute, of 

 which he always spoke very gratefully, and there he resumed the 

 ordinary routine of the education of the period. It was a little 

 incident at Dollar, the discovery in the garden of Mr. Lindsay, the 

 master with whom he was boarded, of an old and half-buried sundial, 

 in the erection and orientation of which he took some part, that in- 

 oculated him with a taste for exact science ; but it was not until he 

 went to the University of Edinburgh, at the age of 17, that his ap- 

 prenticeship to science really began. There he soon diverged from 

 the accustomed literary course and plunged, as it were instinctively, 

 into mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In this congenial element 

 his ability was speedily recognized by two of his professors, Guthrie 

 Tait and Lj^on Playfair, the latter of whom made him his class as- 

 sistant. There was great intellectual activity in Edinburgh while 

 Dewar's lot was cast there in the sixties of last century, and into that 

 he entered with zest and with an acceptance not usually accorded to 

 so young a man. His teaching power attracted large classes to his 

 practical demonstrations, and the experimental tendencies, which 

 were in the marrow of his bones, unmistakably displayed themselves, 

 leading Lyon Playfair to suggest to him that he should accept an 

 appointment for technical work in connection with the dyeing in- 

 dustry with which his friend Crum Brown, who became Playfair's 

 successor, was, by family ties, associated. Had Dewar adopted this 

 course Perkins might have been anticipated, but he preferred to re- 

 main in Edinburgh to carry on his less circumscribed researches 

 there, in the meantime, however, enlarging the scope of his studies 

 by a sojourn at Ghent, where under Kekuli he gave special atten- 

 tion to organic chemistry. 



Returning to Edinburgh as demonstrator of chemistry in the uni- 

 versity, he engaged, with Guthrie Tait, in experiments with Crookes's 

 newly invented radiometer, and with McKendrick in an inquiry on 

 the physiological action of light. From the university he passed to 

 the Dick Veterinary College as professor of chemistry, and it was 

 while diligently working there that an offer of promotion unex- 

 pectedly came to him. There was a vacancy in the Jacksonian pro- 

 fessorship at Cambridge, for which there were several candidates, 

 and a selection was imminent, but at this moment the late Sir George 

 Humphrey visited Edinburgh as an examiner in the medical faculty 

 and was introduced to Dewar. With keen discernment he took his 

 measure and immediately telegraphed to Doctor Porter, then tutor, 

 afterwards master of Peterhouse, "Hold your hand, I have found 

 the man." At the same time Guthrie Tait wrote to Cambridge in- 

 dicating Dewar, and that settled the matter, and the post was of- 



