A GREAT SCIENTIST.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 148, 19 December 1907, Page 7

A GREAT SCIENTIST.

DEATH OF LORD KELVIN. AGED 83 A CHARACTER SKETCH. By Telegraph. — Press Association. — Copyright. LONDON, 18th December. Lord Kelvin, the eminent scientist, is dead. Plain William Thomson he was at the start, becoming better known yeays afterwards to the scientific world as Sir William Thomson. He came of a race of sturdy Ulster or Scotch-Irish farmers, and was born 25th June, 1824, in Belfast. But when ho was eight years old, or in 1832, the family removed to Glasgow, the father, James Thomson, having been appointed professor of mathematics in the university. There ho received from his father a thorough education, entering that seat of learning when but a child, gaining, among other honours, the first prizes in the junior and senior mathematical classes. He won in 1838 a university - prize for an essay on "The Figure of the Earth," and' in 1839, only fifteen, he went to Cambridge, graduating there in 1845 as second senior wrangler and winning the highest mathematical honour. From Cambridge he went to Paris and studied for a time under Regnau.lt. His ac.tivity from the outset was marvellous. As a boy he was able to do what the most accomplished men could not. To him fell many prizes before he left Cambridge, and he began writing and publishing papers that attracted wide attention while he was yet an undergraduate. As he began so he continued, a man of vast vitality, intellectual and physical. He was the greatest living scientific man of the day — a physicist, an electrician, a mathematician, a varied and successful inventor, a great teacher, an unexcelled expounder of popular sci.ence, and beside that a great many other things. He was even a riionoymaker as an electrical expert, and by means of his numerous inventions, though ho had not sought after gain,, and while a; college professor, contrary to what is usual with that class, had his country houses and his yachts, and was able by his acquired wealth to sustain the burdens of a peerage. As a youth he was an athlete, won the Colquhoun sculls, rowed in the 'varsity crew, and was presidont of the Cambridge Musical Society. Moreover, he was something of a- politician, an arden Unionist, and it is whispered that his political views had something to do with his being made a lord. Professor Thomson became Sir William Thomson because of his unflagging interest in the first transatlantic cable. He was electrician on tho Agamemnon when the cable was laid, and, by means of delicate instruments of his device, the first message underneath the sea was sent. After four hundred such communications the cable gave out, but the faith of the enthusiastic professor never wavered. In 1866 the (Great Eastern laid the new line, and tho croakers were for ever silenced ; and for this the seer, true to the .scientific vision which had never faded irom his eye, was knighted. Then long afterwards, in 1891, he was made president of the Royal Society. In tho same year he was elevated to the peerage, a distinction unique in the annals of science. The list of highest honours conferred upon him by foreign Governments is a long one. The ground for all this distinction bestowed cannot be detailed here. Tho doctrine of tho conservation of energy Lord Kelvin lias had more to do in putting into working shape than all the scientists together who have preceded him. The theory today of ether, the medium of transmis- i sion of light and electricity throughout tho realms of space, is of his elaboration, and his conception that what is \ called matter is merely vortices — whirligigs as it were — in this ether, is ono of ■ tho most far-reaching, giving promise of being most fruitful of all the speculation evolved in connection with modern physics. But the scientist in this instance is not mainly one of a speculativo mind ; ho is intensely interested in speculation, that can be made to work ; in short, is a practical man. When Lord Kelvin celebrated in 1896 his jubiloo as a professor in Glasgow University, his students gathered about him from nearly every corner of {ho world, and the representatives of scientific societies then present made an distinguished a company of learned men as over was collected *n the earth to do honour to ono man. He was three times mairicd. Practically up to the day of his death he was extraordinarily halo and vigorous, notable for every kind of activity, unsurpassed in attainments, unique among Scientific workers, a marvel of man. Many of Lord Kelvin's papors deal with the theory of heat — "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat" ; "On the Thermal Effects of Fluids in Motion" (Joule and Thomson) ; "Compendium of Fourier Mathematics for the Conduction of Heat in Solids" ; "Elasticity and Heat." Other papers worthy of special mention are the following: — "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to U\e Dissipa- j tion of Mechanical Energy" ; "On the j Theory of the Electric Telegraph" ; "On I the Use of Observations of Terrestrial Temperature for the Investigation of >. Absolute Dates in Geology"; "On the j Electro-Dynamic Qualities of Metals." I