134 Britain's Heritage of Science 



whom death has too soon removed, occupied the Chair of 

 Mathematics at Edinburgh from 1879 to the end of his life. 

 He was a brilliant teacher, possessing one of those clear and 

 critical minds which care more for the quality than the 

 quantity of their work. Everything that flowed from his 

 pen was of the highest standard. He had the distinction 

 of being the first to carry out original investigations in the 

 Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where he tested the 

 truth of Ohm's law to a degree of accuracy far surpassing 

 all previous work. He published a " Treatise on Algebra " 

 and several papers of a mathematical character. During 

 the last years of his life he was occupied with an interesting 

 investigation on the oscillations of level (" seiches ") in the 

 Scotch lakes, initiated by Forel's observations at the Lake of 

 Geneva. 



Glasgow University was naturally dominated during a 

 great part of last century by Lord Kelvin's prodigious 

 activity. His work on heat has already been described; his 

 contributions to the practical applications of science will be 

 referred to later, and as regards his researches on hydro- 

 dynamics and other parts of Mathematical Physics, the 

 reader must be referred to special treatises. 



During a period of forty years, Philip Kelland (1808- 

 1879) taught mathematics at the same University, but his 

 published work deals mainly with the undulatory theory of 

 light, and is concentrated into a few years following his 

 degree course at Cambridge 



The University of Glasgow rendered one of the most 

 important services that have ever been conferred both on 

 science or on industry when, in 1840, it founded, under the 

 auspices of Queen Victoria, the first Professorship of Civil 

 Engineering in the United Kingdom. The second holder of 

 the Chair, W. J. Maquorn Rankine (1820-1872), stands out 

 as a man of striking originality and a great teacher. Most 

 of his early instruction was received at home. Before he 

 entered the University of Edinburgh, at the age of sixteen, 

 he had already studied Newton's " Principia." He then 

 became engaged in various engineering enterprises, until he 

 was appointed Professor of Engineering at Glasgow in 1855. 

 Rankine was one of the imaginative men who are not satisfied 



