December 6, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



875 



a western college, where he acquired, how- 

 ever, experience and useful discipline. 



In the spring of 1872 he returned to Troy 

 as instructor in physics, on a salary the 

 amount of which he made conditional on 

 the purchase by the Institute of a certain 

 number of hundreds of dollars' worth of 

 physical apparatus. If they failed in this, 

 as afterward happened, his pay was to be 

 greater, and he strictly held them to the 

 contract. His three years at Troy as in- 

 structor and assistant professor were busy, 

 fruitful years. In addition to his regular 

 work he did an enormous amount of study, 

 purchasing for that purpose the most recent 

 and most advanced books on mathematics 

 and physics. He built his electro- dyna- 

 mometer and carried out his first great re- 

 search. As already stated, this quickly 

 brought him reputation in Europe and, what 

 he prized quite as highly, the personal 

 friendship of Maxwell, whose ardent ad- 

 mirer and champion he remained to the end 

 of his life. In April, 1875, he wrote, "It 

 will not be very long before my reputation 

 reaches this country," and he hoped that 

 this would bring him opportunity to devote 

 more of his time and energy to original re- 

 search. 



This opportunity for which he so much 

 longed was nearer at hand than he imag- 

 ined. Among the members of the Visiting 

 Board at the West Point Military Acad- 

 emy in June, 1875, was one to whom had 

 come the splendid conception of what was 

 to be at once a revelation and a revolu- 

 tion in methods of higher education. In 

 selecting the first faculty for an institu- 

 tion of learning which, within a single 

 decade, was to set the pace for real uni- 

 versity work in America, and whose in- 

 fluence was to be felt in every school and 

 college of the land before the end of the 

 first quarter of a century. Dr. Gilman was 

 guided by an instinct which more than all 

 else insured the success of the new enter- 



prise. A few words about Rowland from 

 Professor Michie, of the Military Academy, 

 led to his being called to West Point by 

 telegraph, and on the banks of the Hudson 

 these two walked and talked, ' he telling 

 me,' Dr. Gilman has said, ' his dreams for 

 science, and I telling him my dreams for 

 higher education.' Rowland, with charac- 

 teristic frankness, writes of this interview, 

 ' Professor Gilman was very much pleased 

 with me,' which, indeed, was the simple 

 truth. The engagement was quickly made. 

 Rowland was sent to Europe to study lab- 

 oratories and purchase apparatus, and the 

 rest is history, already told and everywhere 

 known. 



Rowland's personality was in many re- 

 spects remarkable. Tall, erect and lithe in 

 figure, fond of athletic sports, there was 

 upon his face a certain look of severity 

 which was, in a way, an index of the exact- 

 ing standard he set for himself and others. 

 It did not conceal, however, what was, after 

 all, his most striking characteristic, namely, 

 a perfectly frank, open and simple straight- 

 forwardness in thought, in speech and in 

 action. His love of truth held him in su- 

 preme control, and, like Galileo, he had no 

 patience with those who try to make things 

 appear otherwise than as they actually are. 

 His criticisms of the work of others were 

 keen and merciless, and sometimes there 

 remained a sting of which he himself had 

 not the slightest suspicion. ' I would not 

 have done it for the world,' he once said to 

 me after being told that his pitiless criti- 

 cism of a scientific paper had wounded the 

 feelings of its author. As a matter of fact, 

 he was warm-hearted and generous, and 

 his occasionally seeming otherwise was due 

 to the complete separation, in his own 

 mind, of the product and the personality of 

 the author. He possessed that rare power, 

 habit in his case, of seeing himself, not as 

 others see him, but as he saw others. He 

 looked at himself and his own work exactly 



