NA TURE 



6i 



THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1910. 



THE LIFE OF LORD KELVIN. 

 'he Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of 

 Largs. By Silvanus P. Thompson. Vol. i., 

 pp. xx + 584; vol. ii., pp. xi+585-1297. (London: 

 Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Two vols. Price 

 305. net. 



I^'HE task of the biographer is, in several respects, 

 a very different one from that of the scientific 

 listorian. Indeed, it may be affirmed with some 

 hadow of truth that the best biography belongs to 

 he domain of imaginative literature. For to be 

 perfectly successful the biographer must make a hero 

 if his subject ; in other words, he must, as an artist, 

 Jealise without destro ying- the features he endea- 

 ours to portray. Too'^^56^ten he is a mere ordinary 

 ihotographer who removes wrinkles and smooths 

 ver defects, and thereby produces a picture, recog- 

 isable indeed, but of a man in unnatural pose, and ill 

 t ease in holiday garments. Again, the true artist 

 oes not crowd his canvas too much, nor does he labour 

 he details of his picture too diligently ; we are not 

 empted to look through our magnifying glasses at 

 particular parts of it, to our loss of the effect of the 

 /hole. Finally, he must write from personal know- 

 ?dge, and with the warmth of personal affection ; 

 ut he must not allow his feelings to outrun his 

 iscretion, or permit his devotion to blind him to the 

 ict that his hero shared the limitations of ordinary 

 umanity. It is just to say that Prof. Thompson 

 asses these tests with a fair measure of success. His 

 ography is well and sympathetically written, it 

 Tords a vivid, and, on the whole, a true picture of 

 ord Kelvin as a student of science, as a university 

 acher, as an engineer and man of affairs, and as the 

 Ueague and friend of a large circle of those devoted 

 science. If here and there — for example in the 

 :count of the latter part of Lord Kelvin's student 

 reer and of the proceedings at the Kelvin jubilee — 

 e detail is worked with too microscopic minute- 

 ss, the lines are generally bold enough to show 

 e man and his work in fair proportion, and to 

 ive the reader with a feeling of contentment with 

 2 manner in which the story of a great life has been 

 d and its achievements recounted. 

 The task of the scientific historian has already been 

 empted by Larmor, who has framed an estimate of 

 rd Kelvin's work such as hardly anyone else could 

 ve composed at the present time. But that work 

 1 not be seen in its true perspective until some 

 srval of time has elapsed; its full effect on the 

 gress of science cannot until then be traced in 

 ail in the complicated web of scientific fact and 

 ory which so many artists have woven, each inter- 

 ting the part of nature's design which lay before 

 eyes. 



'he sketch of Prof. James Thomson, Lord Kelvin's 

 ler, and of college life in Belfast and Glasgow in 



I second, third, and fourth decades of the nine- 

 ith century, is somewhat more meagre than it 

 ht have been, perhaps ; and a little later, when the 

 fessor of mathematics appears again, the picture 

 I NO. 2107, VOL. 83] 



seems a little out of focus. Tales of his efficiency, 

 and of the respect and admiration with which his 

 students regarded him as a teacher, are still current 

 among the few Glasgow graduates who remember 

 the old college as it was in those days, at the begin- 

 ning of the last quarter of a century of its existence. 

 But no doubt many of the readers of Prof. Thompson's 

 book, like the present writer, have come to it fresh 

 from the perusal of the charming account of the 

 family life of the Thomsons contained in Miss Ag^es 

 King's recently published "Lord Kelvin's Early 

 Home " — the reminiscences of Mrs. King, Lord 

 Kelvin's eldest sister — a narrative which. Prof. 

 Thompson tells us, he has purposely refrained from 

 trenching upon. 



Prof. James Thomson's oral examinations are still 

 spoken of as stimulating and instructive, and his 

 example was followed with success in Aberdeen by 

 David Thomson, who went there to be professor of 

 natural philosophy after teaching Dr. Meikleham's 

 classes during the years that preceded William Thom- 

 son's return from Cambridge. But the power of 

 effective oral examination, like that of maintaining 

 order without effort, is the result of a certain almost 

 indefinable personal quality which many highly gifted 

 men do not possess. The advent of Dr. James Thom- 

 son put an end at once to the pea-shooting and other 

 antics in which the students of mathematics had 

 previously indulged ; and his personality impressed 

 itself in other ways on university discipline and the 

 conduct of university affairs, through his influence 

 as a member of the Faculty, which, not the Senatus, 

 was then the administrative governing body. In later 

 days the respect which the students felt for William 

 Thomson's scientific eminence, and the controlling 

 force of his temperament, combined to preserve order 

 in his presence and prevent the most daring from 

 taking liberties. His oral examinations, however, 

 were rather an occasion for digressions, which, though 

 highly interesting and instructive in themselves, were 

 not always such as to recall and elucidate the topics 

 dealt with in the previous lecture. 



The old college. Prof. Thompson says, was sur- 

 rounded with horrible slums, and no doubt its 

 environment was sufficiently wretched. This should 

 not be misunderstood. Things were not always 

 so bad in that part of the city, and at the pre- 

 sent time, thanks to the Glasgow City Improve- 

 ment Trust, the conditions of life in the east end 

 have been greatly improved. In the 'thirties and 

 'forties, when the Thomsons lived in the residential 

 court of the college, the old order of things was 

 passing away. Bailie Nicol Jarvie no longer lived over 

 his counting-house, and the tobacco lords and other 

 wealthv merchants, grown distrustful of the comforts 

 of the Saltmarket, were migrating from Virginia 

 Street to comfortable villas and self-contained houses 

 in the west end, where in a freer air and more health- 

 ful surroundings they lived a not much less frugal 

 life. The birth and development of engineering 

 established factories on the Clyde, and brought 

 labourers and mechanics from all quarters. The 

 lanes of the east end were transformed, from places 

 not very different from those which abut against 



D 



