OCTOBEE 27, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



565 



son of their experience. As the list covers 

 men in all lines of business and industry, it 

 is no longer absolutely necessary to submit 

 such questions to untrained jurors, or to 

 judges without special fitness to pronounce 

 upon them. — New York Evening Post. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Life and Scientific Worh of Peter Outhrie 



Tait. By Dr. C. G. Knott. Cambridge 



University Press. 1911. 



The volume before us supplements the two 

 volumes of " Scientific Papers " published by 

 the same press in 1898 and 1900, under the 

 supervision of Tait himself. For the prepa- 

 ration of this volume Professor Knott was 

 well qualified, having been a pupil, colleague 

 and friend of Tait; and he has made excellent 

 use of the material placed at his disposal, 

 giving full and interesting information about 

 the relations of Tait to the other great mathe- 

 maticians and physicists of his time. 



The author does not follow the chronolog- 

 ical order, but divides his material with some 

 logical redundance as follows : Chapter I., 

 Memoir; II., Experimental Work; III., 

 Mathematical Work; IV., Quaternions; V., 

 Thomson and Tait's ISTatural Philosophy; VI., 

 Other Books; VII., Addresses, Reviews and 

 Correspondence; VIII., Popular Scientific 

 Articles. Appended is a bibliography of 

 Tait's writings. 



In his early years Tait became enamored of 

 pure science, and he clung to that ideal 

 throughout life. He was a very brilliant 

 pupil at the Edinburgh Academy, where he 

 had Maxwell for schoolmate and special 

 friend; he did not, like Maxwell, study at the 

 University of Edinburgh, but went straight to 

 the University of Cambridge, where he grad- 

 uated as senior wrangler; he was for six 

 years professor of mathematics at Belfast, 

 and for forty years professor of natural phi- 

 losophy at Edinburgh. His manner of life 

 at Edinburgh was simple. During the winter 

 term he was miich occupied with lecturing, in 

 which he was singularly clear and inspiring; 

 during the summer term he devoted much 

 time to experimental investigation in the lab- 



oratory; the long and the short vacations he 

 spent at St. Andrews, where there is a famous 

 golfing course; both summer and winter it 

 was his custom to work to late hours in his 

 library. 



One of the most elegant of Tait's investi- 

 gations, combining mathematical, experi- 

 mental and technical skill, dealt with the 

 phenomena of golf. I remember that when I 

 was an instructor in the laboratory, American 

 students used to describe the curves of a base- 

 ball and ask for the explanation; I doubt 

 whether Professor Tait at that time could 

 give an adequate explanation. But it is dif- 

 ferent now; his investigation of the path of 

 the golf ball applies also to the phenomena of 

 baseball and of tennis, and is full of interest 

 to scientific players. 



Tait's greatest contribution to mathe- 

 matical analysis undoubtedly consists in his 

 advocacy and development of the quaternion 

 method invented by Hamilton. At the time 

 when Hamilton was about to publish his 

 " Lectures on Quaternions," his friend De 

 Morgan suggested the names of a very few 

 mathematicians on whom a presentation copy 

 would not be thrown away; one of these was 

 Professor Thomson, afterwards Lord Kelvin. 

 Doubless the advice was acted on, but for some 

 reason Thomson formed an unfavorable 

 opinion, to which with his characteristic 

 tenacity he clung ever afterwards. On the 

 other hand, Tait, having just graduated, was 

 curious enough to buy a copy, and on perasal 

 became convinced that the method contained 

 possibilities of highly useful application to 

 mathematical physics. It was through Tait 

 that Maxwell became an earnest student, and 

 it is evident from the correspondence here 

 printed that Maxwell was one of the first 

 vector-analysts. The book before us throws 

 much light on the relations of these three 

 great Scotsmen to one another, and on the 

 relation of Tait to Hamilton. 



The fifth chapter gives authentic informa- 

 tion about the preparation of the celebrated 

 " Treatise on Natural Philosophy." The idea 

 was due to Tait, and some advance in its 

 realization had been made before Thomson 



