290 



NATURE 



[November ii, 1915 



was of Hamburg- orig-in, but had been settled in 

 this country for generations. Another branch had 

 given a professor to the University of Leyden, and 

 his portrait is to be seen in the senate house. 



Arthur William Rucker received his early educa- 

 tion at the Clapham Grammar School, at one 

 time under the direction of the Rev. Charles 

 Pritchard, F.R.S., who subsequently became 

 Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Here 

 Rucker gained that grounding- in mathematics to 

 which much of his success as a teacher and 

 investigator was due. From Clapham he pro- 

 ceeded to Oxford, and was entered at Brasenose. 

 After a brilliant career as an underg-raduate, with 

 special distinction in mathematics, he was elected 

 a fellow and lecturer of his coUeg-e, and became 

 demonstrator of physics in the Clarendon Labora- 

 tory. Oxford made a deep and lasting impres- 

 sion upon Rucker, apart from her effect upon his 

 career as a man of science, for he came there 

 under influences which profoundly affected his 

 religious convictions and shaped the whole course 

 of his spiritual life. He seldom cared to speak 

 of sacred matters even to his most intimate 

 friends, but to those who were admitted to his 

 confidence it was evident how much he realised 

 he owed to his Alma Mater in this respect and 

 with what grateful affection he regarded her. 



My acquaintance with Rucker dated from 1874. 

 In that year we, together with the late Professor 

 Green, who afterwards occupied the chair of 

 geology at Oxford, were elected as the first 

 teachers in the newly-created Yorkshire College, 

 Leeds — Rucker as professor of mathematics and 

 physics. Its habitation at that time was in the 

 disused Bankruptcy Court, a somewhat woe- 

 begone, ill-constructed building which, after a 

 checkered career, had been turned into a school 

 of cookery. Unfortunately the gastronomic ex- 

 periments of the pupils had succeeded in setting- 

 lire to the place, and my first meeting with 

 Rucker was over the charred beams of the prin- 

 cipal room. The spectacle that this prospective 

 seat of science and learning then presented seemed 

 sorrowful enough, but, nevertheless, to the 

 budding professors it had in it a certain element 

 of humour. As we could not hear of any students, 

 the circumstance that there was no proper place 

 in which to teach them was not, perhaps, of press- 

 ing importance. But Yorkshire grit and energy 

 soon got the place into something- like shape. 

 The old court-room was eventually converted into 

 a fairly good lecture theatre ; there was laboratory 

 accommodation for about a couple of dozen 

 workers, two or three small classrooms, with 

 some provision of vvhat were euphemistically 

 termed professors' private rooms. At length we 

 were able to make a belated start with as many 

 students as could be counted upon the fing-ers of 

 one hand. Such was the beginning of the institu- 

 tion which has developed into the University of 

 Leeds, with an eminent professoriate in numerous 

 faculties, housed in handsome buildings, with we'.l- 

 equipped laboratories, workshops, and class- 

 rooms, spacious libraries and museums, a long- 



NO. 2402, VOL. 96] 



roll of graduates in arts and science, and an annual 

 entry of many hundreds of students of both sexes. 

 Towards this consummation Rucker worked un- 

 remittingly. From the outset he threw himself 

 heartily into the intellectual life of Leeds, was an 

 active member of its Literary and Philosophical 

 Society, and became associated with certain of 

 the educational organisations in the district. His 

 energy, capacity, soundness of judgment, and 

 business aptitude were soon appreciated by his 

 colleagues, and quickly gained for him the com- 

 plete confidence of the governing body. Moreover, 

 he developed into an excellent teacher. He was an 

 admirable lecturer, with a remarkable power of 

 exposition and a g^ift of felicitous phrase, which, 

 with a certain delicate, restrained sense of humour, 

 made him delightful to listen to. 



Rucker never took any very strong- interest in 

 mere party politics, but as a youngf man his poli- 

 tical sympathies were distinctly Liberal. Nothing, 

 perhaps, more strikingly illustrates the influence 

 and position he acquired in the town than the fact 

 that in the election of 1885 the party managers 

 should have invited him to contest North Leeds, 

 a Conservative stronghold, and then reckoned a 

 safe seat for Mr. Lawies Jackson, now Lora 

 Allerton. It was one of the most strenuous con- 

 tests ever fought in that division, Rucker being 

 beaten by only 257 votes on a poll of nearly 9000. 

 In the following year came the great Disruption, 

 and Rucker as a Liberal Unionist unsuccessfully 

 fought the Pudsey division. 



Somewhat to the surprise of his colleagues, and 

 greatly to their regret, he now severed his con- 

 nection with the college. Thanks in a large 

 measure to his untiring efforts, his constructive 

 ability and skill in neg-otiation, he had seen the 

 institution raised to the rank of a constituent 

 college of the Victoria University, and thanks 

 also largely to his influence with the g-overning 

 body, it was now in a habitation worthy of its 

 position. With no immediate prospect of enter- 

 ing public or political life, he returned to London 

 and again took up his residence with his parents 

 at Clapham. 



In the following year I followed him as suc- 

 cessor to the late Sir Edward Frankland in the 

 Normal School of Science, South Kensington. 

 On the death of Prof. Guthrie in 1886, I succeeded 

 in inducing Rucker to reconsider his decision to 

 abandon the career of a teacher, and with the 

 cordial concurrence of Huxley, then dean of the 

 School, and of the authorities of the Science and 

 Art Department, he was invited to occupy the 

 vacant chair of physics, and he resumed what 

 really was his true vocation with all the energy, 

 ability, and success that had attended his work 

 in Leeds. At South Kensington, as at Leeds, it 

 became our duty, by direction of the authorities, 

 to prepare plans for a considerable extension of 

 the laboratories and classrooms of the Royal Col- 

 lege of Science, and to Rucker 's thoughtful pre- 

 vision, experience and mastery of detail, com- 

 bined with the planning- of Sir Aston Webb, the 

 present admirable physical laboratories of the 



