APRIL 7, 1923] 
in this field our position to-day might well have been 
one of unrivalled supremacy. 
Dewar also came under Kekulé’s influence at Ghent. 
_ Korner was then assistant in the laboratory and Dewar 
and he became associated in all sorts of devilry—Ko6rner 
_ being a great practical joker and Dewar a wild young 
Scot. The stamp of the organic chemist was thus 
burnt into his soul at a critical period—the spell of 
_K6rner’s marvellous preparative skill being cast over 
him ; he often referred to the time. His mathematical 
_and physical proclivities were thus broadened and he 
became a complete chemist in spirit. The Dewar 
benzene-formula, though an imperfect expression of 
modern knowledge—paper formule are but short- 
hand expressions of character—has not yet lost its 
vogue. His name is also written in the pyridine 
chapter. He and I were the first users of sulphuric 
-chlorhydrol, SO,HCI. He did notable work before he 
came south—first with Tait, in which he laid the founda- 
tion both for his later application of a vacuum in pre- 
venting heat exchanges and of charcoal as an absorb- 
ent ; and with M‘Kendrick, with whom he carried out 
i important inquiry on the physiological action of 
ight. 
In 1875 he was appointed Jacksonian professor of 
“natural experimental philosophy in the University of 
Cambridge and became the colleague of Prof. Liveing. 
He never carried out the prime duty of his office—the 
discovery of a cure for the gout—though in early days 
he sought unsuccessfully for the qualification which 
might have helped in the work; unfortunately, he 
only spoilt his digestion and so, in later years, was per- 
force an extraordinarily careful liver. 
Two years after his appointment at Cambridge he 
also became Fullerian professor of chemistry at the 
Royal Institution, London. He had twice lectured 
there previously on the work he had done with 
M‘Kendrick. The second lecture (March 31, 1876), his 
trial trip, was probably the most carefully prepared, 
certainly the most logical, discourse he ever delivered ; 
I well recollect how fascinated some of us were by it. 
_ Even if it be possible for a man to serve two masters, 
the task becomes beyond human power when ghosts 
aid one of them. As an artist, Dewar had the innate 
belief of primitive man in ghosts and in the Royal In- 
stitution laboratory, miserable as was the accommoda- 
tion it afforded, the ghosts of Davy and Faraday were 
ever about him. Let us hope that his successor will 
be gripped by thoughts of the trinity which Dewar’s 
entry into their Valhalla has established. To have 
served the Institution honourably, in a way to justify 
mention in history on a par with them, is an achieve- 
ment he, in his modesty, scarcely contemplated as 
possible and yet he ever aimed at it. The feeling that 
he had so much exceeded Faraday’s period of office 
and not only maintained but also steadily improved the 
quality of his work, I have reason to think, was year 
_ by year a more and more powerful mainspring of action 
in the indomitable fight against circumstances which 
he waged during these late bitter times of strife. He 
was a terrible pessimist. 
To return to Cambridge, he found there no tradition 
of practical achievement to influence him. His col- 
league Liveing and the Master of his College. Dr. 
Porter, were perhaps the only men who fathomed his 
No. 2788, vot. 111] 






















NATURE 
exceptional skill as a director. 
the Davy-Faraday laboratory was not, from the begin- 

473 
outstanding ability. The crudity of youth was still 
upon him and the free manners of a Scottish University 
were not those of conventional Cambridge—his some- 
times imprecatory style was not thought quite comme 
il faut by the good. No attempt was made to tame 
him or provide means for the development of his 
special gift of manipulative skill. Yet he soon began 
to exercise an influence which probably has had more 
to do with the marvellous recent advance of the 
Chemical School at Cambridge than is commonly sup- 
posed. The fine volume of collected researches in 
spectroscopy which Prof. Liveing and he published a 
few years ago, is a memorial not merely to their activity 
but of the example they set as exact observers in a 
field which, at that time, was in sore need of cautious 
workers. And the work he did in London had its 
reflex effect at Cambridge. 
Dewar was not great as a teacher. His mind was of 
too original and impatient a type. He never suffered 
fools gladly and students are too apt to be foolish—at 
our old Universities, even to ape the part of superior 
beings. His forte lay in directing competent hands, 
not in forming them. He worked himself and through 
skilled assistants, not through pupils. He was violently 
impatient of failure in manipulation and his work was 
almost entirely manipulatory. He, therefore, never 
created a school. The pity of it is that circumstances 
were such that he never had a properly large staff. 
That he accomplished so much with the assistance of the 
few able men who have aided him is proof of his 
It is unfortunate that 
ning, organised on lines which would have placed its 
resources in his hands rather than at the disposal of 
undirected individual workers ; it is a grievous fact 
that he leaves no followers trained to use his incom- 
parable methods. 
Nominally a chemist, Dewar’s work lay in fields of his 
own creation, not borderlands but regions before un- 
cultivated. He was no mere experimentalist but an 
artist to his finger-tips and in nose, tongue, eye and ear 
—a perfect judge of Wein, Weib and Gesang, giving to 
these terms their widest significance ; music came 
next to science in his affections. 
Though deeply read and a great lover of poetry and 
literature, he lacked the gift of ready literary expres- 
sion—except in his letters and conversation—and was 
often an incoherent lecturer, yet his lectures were the 
most masterly and fascinating displays ever witnessed. 
He set a standard which has made the Royal Institution 
table remarkable throughout the world. Faraday was 
celebrated for the simplicity of his style—Dewar is to 
be thought of on account of the daring of his displays, 
the wonderful refinement and appositeness of his 
demonstrations, all most carefully arranged and re- 
hearsed in advance. He was a great scientific actor, 
playing plays with the most thrilling of plots and 
entirely original special scenery for each performance. 
His manner, his brogue, even his impatience, gave a 
peculiar charm to the impression he produced ; but you 
did well to have been behind the scenes if you wished 
to gather the full meaning of his message. His demon- 
strations were unique in character; few realise the 
infinite loving care he devoted to their preparation. In 
their simplicity they were often profound. I can never 
