70 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



to 1914), and to some extent overlapped. Forbes was only 

 fifteen years senior to WyviUe Thomson, and Thomson eleven 

 years senior to Murray, While John Murray was still a 

 school-boy in Upper Canada, Forbes was running his brief 

 meteoric career as professor in Edinburgh, and WyviUe 

 Thomson was a young lecturer on the natural sciences in 

 Ireland. Curiously enough, all three went through unusually 

 extended courses as students of medicine and science at the 

 University of Edinburgh, and not one of them took a degree, 

 Forbes was a genius who neglected his work and frankly 

 " funked " his examinations when the time came. In 

 Thomson's case ill-health, fortunately for science, stopped 

 his proposed career in medicine ; while Murray despised 

 examinations and degrees, and probably never proposed to 

 take them. He studied a subject because he wanted to know 

 it, and in that spirit he ranged widely over the Faculties of 

 his university. When I was a student and young graduate 

 I used to hear him denounce in vigorous language aU examina- 

 tions and other formal tests of knowledge, and yet, late in 

 life, there was probably no man of his time who had so many 

 honorary degrees and titles conferred upon him by the univer- 

 sities and learned academies of Europe and America, 



After returning to Scotland as a boy in the teens, he lived 

 for some time with a grandfather at Bridge of Allan, and 

 attended the High School at StirHng. During this time he 

 seems to have been most interested in the physical sciences, 

 and especially electricity. He estabhshed some electrical 

 apparatus at his home, and in an address to his old school, in 

 1899, he gives an amusing account of some of the results of his 

 experiments with a large induction coil, such as the following: 

 *' On another occasion, several companions arrived from 

 Stirling to see my experiments ; they had with them five 

 dogs, one of them being ' Mysie,' a large dog belonging to 

 Sir John Hay, and I had a large Newfoundland called ' Max.' 

 We resolved to give the dogs a shock. They were duly 

 arranged in the room, and the circuit was completed by 



