24 



THOMAS GRAY. 



Dr. Thomas Gray, a member of the Indiana Academy of Science since 

 18S8, was President in 1897-8, died in Terre Haute, Ind., December 19, 

 1908. 



He was born in Lochgelly, Scotland, February 4, 1850, received his 

 early education in the schools of the district and, after serving an 

 apprenticeship in handicraft, entered the University of Glasgow, gradu- 

 ating from the Mechanical Engineering course, with high honors, in 18T4. 

 After graduation he became Research Assistant to Lord Kelvin (Sir Will- 

 iam Thompson). His work lay especially in the direction of absolute 

 measurements in electricity and magnetism, electrical and heat conductiv- 

 ity of glasses of various compositions and the variation in conductivity 

 of metals under stress. In 1878 he became Professor of Telegraph Engi- 

 neering in the University of Tokio, Japan. While there he became in- 

 terested in earthquake phenomena and invented several seismographs and 

 investigated the elastic constants of many rocks. In 1881 he returned to 

 Scotland, becoming Lord Kelvin's personal assistant, undertaking investi- 

 gations in connection with practical problems in electricity then coming 

 to the front. He developed and investigated methods for electrolytic 

 measurements of electric currents and largely designed the well known 

 Kelvin balances. He was Lord Kelvin's and Flemming Jenkins' repre- 

 sentative as engineer for the Commercial Cable Companies and super- 

 vised the laying of the Bennett-Mackay transatlantic cables. In 1888 he 

 came to Terre Haute, Ind., as professor of dynamic engineering in the 

 Rose Polytechnic Institute, which position he held until his death. His 

 investigational work was now mainly of an engineering character, too 

 well known to recount. He was the author of several important works. 

 the best known perhaps being the Smithsonian Physical Tables. The 

 articles in the Encyclopedia Brittanica on telegraphs and telephones were 

 from his pen. He also edited the definitions in electricity and magnetism 

 for the Century Dictionary- He was the author of about sixty papers on 

 scientific subjects, communicated to engineering societies and scientific 

 journals. He was a member of most of the American scientific and engi- 



