ixix 



On the 11th of December, 1/81, at Jedburgh, was bom David 

 Brewster, who, having made a telescope when only 10 years of age, 

 and having entered on his university course at 12, devoted one of the 

 longest of lives to discoveries in optics, and at last, laden with academic 

 and scientific honours, sank peacefully to rest on the 10th of February, 

 1868. 



He was one of four brothers, all educated for the Church of Scotlaud, 

 and he advanced to the position of a licentiate ; but a certain nervousness 

 in speaking and delicacy of health, combined with an overpowering love 

 for scientific pursuits, led him to decline a good presentation, and to aban- 

 don the clerical profession for that of an expounder of natural philosophy. 

 Thus he entered on a career of investigation and literary work which for 

 magnitude, as well as importance, has rarely been rivalled. 



As an editor, he commenced in 1 808 a work so large that it occupied 

 him for twenty-two years — the Edinburgh Encyclopeedia ; and in the 

 mean time he began with Professor Jameson the Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Journal, and subsequently the Edinburgh Journal of Science ; and from 

 1832 he was one of the editors of the Philosophical Magazine. Through- 

 out his connexion with these periodicals he was a frequent contributor of 

 original articles to their pages, and he continued to the last to write for the 

 North British and other Reviews in a style so polished and so vigorous, 

 that multitudes learnt from him the actual state of scientific questions who 

 would never have read a-merely learned dissertation. 



But his fame rests not so much on this literary work as on his original 

 researches, which were so numerous that the ' Catalogue of Scientific 

 Papers' now being published by the Royal Society contains the titles of 299 

 papers by him, besides five in which his name is conjoined with those of 

 other investigators. And these researches, though principally connected 

 with the phenomena of light, spread over many other departments of human 

 knowledge. 



Nor were Brewster's labours for the advancement of science confined to 

 the laboratory and the desk. In 1821 he founded the Scottish Society of 

 Arts, and in 1831 he was one of the small party of friends who instituted 

 the British Association, in the meetings of which he usually took a promi- 

 nent part. 



During this time honours steadily flowed in upon him. He was made 

 an honorary M.A. of Edinburgh in 1800, and seven years afterwards an 

 honorary LL.D. of Aberdeen. From 1838 to 1859 he was Principal of 

 the United Colleges of St. Salvador and St. Leonard's at the University of 

 St. Andrews ; and for the last eight years of his life he held the same im- 

 portant office in the leading University of Scotland. 



Having been chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1808, 

 Sir David acted for a long time as its Secretary, and he was President at 

 the time of his death. In 1815 he obtained both the Copley Medal and 



