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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
post, fortified by testimonials of exceptional strength and cordiality from 
all the most eminent of the Cambridge men of science with whom he had 
been brought into contact : Clerk Maxwell, Sir William Thomson, Professor 
Tait, Sir George Stokes, and Mr Routh (pre-eminent in the annals of 
Cambridge coaches) united in praising what he had already accomplished 
and in forming the happiest auguries for his future. But, in view of his 
youth — it will be remembered that he was little over twenty-six, — he had 
not much expectation of success, and he used to tell afterwards with glee 
how much he was surprised on a certain Saturday morning to receive 
from the Home Secretary a telegram, followed by a letter, informing 
him that he had received the appointment and was expected to enter 
upon its duties at the earliest possible date, which proved to be the 
following Monday. At St Andrews, apart from his professorial work, 
he found strenuous employment in the completion of the “ Electricity ” 
article already referred to. 
In June 1879 he married Miss Margaret Ann Balfour, whom he had 
known from his childhood, and in the following month he was elected by 
the Curators to the chair of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh 
in succession to Professor Kelland. His inaugural lecture, delivered on 
October 30th, opened a career of uninterrupted professorial activity, which 
extended over thirty-two years, and which was destined to be memorable 
in the history of Scottish education. 
If Professor Chrystal was far from agreeing with Poisson in the saying 
which he used to quote, that “ La vie n’est bonne qu a deux choses — a faire 
les mathematiques et a les professer,” he none the less found great happiness 
in being able all through life to surrender himself with love and devotion 
to the twofold task of a discoverer and of a teacher in the subject he 
professed. 
Professor Chrystal was in fact not merely the brilliant Professor of 
Mathematics during his thirty-two years’ occupancy of the Edinburgh 
chair : he created an epoch in the study of that subject not only within 
the University, but throughout Scotland at large. Nay, more, of the 
great and far-reaching changes made in the whole educational system 
of the country during the last forty years he might well have said 
without the slightest shadow of boasting : quorum magna pars fui. 
We may here recapitulate, in a few sentences, the principal stages in that 
great movement. 
In 1878, while he was still in St Andrews, the Royal Commission 
appointed in 1876, with Lord President Inglis as chairman, to inquire 
into the Universities of Scotland, had issued their Report; and, though 
