October 28, 1909J 



NA TURE 



successor, Prof. Jack, and Prof. Gibson himself, and 

 Prof. Blaclcburn's old student, colleague and life-long 

 friend, Prof. Ferguson. It was well known that 

 Prof. Blackburn's health had broken down seriously 

 in the spring, and that there had been no sensible 

 improvement, but the actual news was unexpected. 



Prof. Blackburn's family have been connected with 

 Glasgow for at least three centuries. .\n ancestor of 

 his, Peter Blackburn, was one of the " regents " of 

 the slowly growing University, from 1574. He was 

 appointed when the Town Council handed over to the 

 University grants made to themselves of lands and 

 buildings by Queen .Mary in 1567. From that time 

 until Peter Blackburn was appointed a regent in 

 1874 the University had been all but moribund. 

 Blackburn was brought from St. Andrews, where he 

 had graduated, and he acted as regent shortly before 

 the arrival of the great reformer .Andrew .NIclville. 

 During Melville's epoch-making six years as prin- 

 cipal, and for two years after it, Mr. Blackburn acted 

 as third or principal "regent." The regents used 

 each to take the students committed to them through 

 all their subjects, and for their whole university 

 course. Melville revolutionised this system, setting- 

 each regent to teach some special branch of the 

 graduation course to all the students. Mr. Black- 

 burn was, in fact, " professor " of physics and astro- 

 nomy in the modern sense until he left for Aberdeen, 

 two \-ears after Melville had left for St. Andrews. 



It is curious to find the name Peter surviving after 

 three centuries in the family of which Prof. Blackburn 

 was a member. His eldest brother was Peter Black- 

 burn, long M.P. for Stirlingshire and chairman of 

 the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway before it was 

 merged into the North British. His second brother, 

 Colin Blackburn, afterwards the famous Lord Black- 

 burn of the High Court of .\ppeal, was eighth 

 wrangler in 1835, and Hugh Blaclcburn, the youngest 

 brother, was fifth wrangler in 1845. It was a memor- 

 able year at Cambridge. \\'illiam Thomson, after- 

 wards Lord Kelvin, then a boy of eight, came across 

 from Belfast to Glasgow, where, in 1832, his father 

 had been appointed professor of mathematics. SX the 

 age of twenty-one he was second wrangler and first 

 Smith's prizeman, and founder and editor of the 

 famous Cambridge and Dublin Matltematical Journal. 

 To its first volume Prof. Blackburn contributed a 

 paper on the variation of elements in the planetary 

 system. Nothing quite like that first volume had pre- 

 viously appeared in the British mathematical world. 

 Side by side with Prof. Blackburn's paper were one by 

 Cayley (senior wrangler in 1842) ; a note on induced 

 magnetism on a plate, by William Thomson ; a paper 

 by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Irish Astronomer 

 Royal ; and another on quadrature of surfaces of the 

 second order, by Mr. John H. Jellett. fellow and 

 tutor, and afterwards provost, of Trinity College, 

 Dublin. In the same volume there were papers by 

 Leslie Ellis, senior wrangler in 1840 ; by Boole, after- 

 wards the famous professor at Cork ; by .Augustus 

 de Morgan, London; by Stokes, senior wrangler in 

 1841 ; by D. F. Gregory, fifth wrangler in 1837; by 

 Townsend, of Dublin, and Liouville, of Paris, with 

 four other papers by the young editor himself. In that 

 splendid galaxy of men of mathematical genius Prof. 

 Blackburn took a distinguished place, and he had 

 deeply impressed his friends, and Thomson, no doubt, 

 in particular, by inventing and exhibiting in his 

 rooms his well-known pendulum with double 

 suspension. A little later the two young Scotchmen, 

 Thomson and Blackburn, went to Paris together on a 

 mathematical and physical pilgrimage, and all their 

 lives they remained attached and devoted friends. In 

 1871 they published together the full text of Newton's 



NO. 2087, VOL. 81] 



■• Principia." Later, Prof. Blackburn published a re- 

 vised and extended edition of Sir George Airy's 

 treatise on trigonometry from the " Encyclop;tdia 

 Metropolitana," which appeared in a separate cabinet 

 form in 1855. 



William Thomson entered in 1846 on his splendid 

 tenure of the chair in natural philosophy in Glasgow, 

 which he filled for fifty-three years. Two years later 

 his father, the professor of mathematics there, died 

 unexpectedly, and it was probably largely due to 

 Thomson's entire conviction of the exception.il 

 mathematical ability of his friend that Prof. Blackburn 

 was appointed in 1S49 to succeed Prof. James 

 Thomson. 



His students always felt for him the greatest afi'ec- 

 tion and respect. Every teacher's qualities are ap- 

 praised by the world very much as Mr. Lowe used to 

 judge primary teachers under the famous revised code 

 — by results. Prof. Blackburn had many distinguished 

 pupils who took high places in the mathematical 

 world. I may name Dr. Thomas Muir, who was an 

 admirable assistant to the professor, and who has 

 never, in spite of his engrossing duties as director of 

 education in Cape Colony, intermitted his work on 

 determinants. There was Sir Charles Abercrombie 

 Smith, formerly Auditor-General in Cape Colony and 

 now Vice-Chancellor of the Cape University ; Mr. 

 Dickson and .Mr. Dodds, formerlv tutors of Peterhouse ; 

 Prof. Pinkerton, of Cardiff, and Air. Nixon, of Balfast. 

 But Prof. Blackburn was much more than a mere 

 mathematician. His university speedily discovered his 

 administrative and financial strength, and made him 

 successively convener of its library and its finance 

 committees. Mr. Blackburn was, perhaps, more 

 trusted and more responsible than any of his col- 

 leagues in the removal of the old college from the site 

 it had occupied for four centuries, after it had become 

 unsuitable and perhaps insanitary, to the present 

 splendid buildings. .Among his colleagues his authority 

 was always great, and lie owed this to the strength 

 and simplicity of his ch;iracter, and to the clearness 

 of his practical and judicial mind. Students and col- 

 leagues alike, who knew him better than others could, 

 honoured him and believed in him. Of a sensitive 

 and artistic nature, he did not, however, care, after 

 thirty years, to continue services which increasing 

 deafness made irksome and difiicult. 



For years, Prof. Blackburn, in declining strength 

 and health, never left the estate, beyond the Mull of 

 .\rdnamurchan, where he had found a home in 1879, 

 and where he died. W. J. 



NOTES. 

 Sir Ray Lankester writes to inform us that he has 

 heard from the representatives of the late Prof. Anton 

 Dohrn to the effect that the Zoological Station at Naples 

 remains the property of the heirs of its founder. Neither 

 the German Government nor any German society have 

 acquired any rights in its future disposition. Dr. Reinhardt 

 Dohrn, who has for two years been the acting director of 

 the Zoological Station of Naples, is now director, and has 

 inherited from his father (by agreement with his brothers) 

 the actual property and the leases granted by the Naples 

 municipality as to the site. We wish Dr. Reinhardt 

 Dohrn success and happiness in carrying on the work of 

 his eminent father. 



The Meteorological Office has received reports of 

 observations of an aurora on the nights of October 17, 18, 

 and 19, at several places in England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

 An aurora is also reported in the French Bulletin Inter- 

 national as having occurred at Haparanda on the night 



