A YOUNG PROFESSOR AS A TEXT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3757, 16 March 1926, Page 33

A YOUNG PROFESSOR AS A TEXT.

I.—SCHOLARS. By W.n. A text is sai'l to be for the preacher n point of departure; lie announces it and leaves it. Sometimes before departing he tortures it an I leaves it bleeding. The homiletic habit is strongly ingrained in me, and when I write at the head of my homily, “A Young Professor,” it is really for the purpose of leaving him. I may torture his sensibilities a little first. He will squirm, I know, at being put in evidence. but if he had been here during the last week he would have read in the papers that “Service before self” is the rule for all good men, and he would perhaps have sacrificed himself in order to allow nil old friend to indulge his propensity for preaching.

In University circles it has become known within the last few days that Mr J. W. Hinton, lecturer on Physics in the Otago University, has been offered a professorship in Colombo. Mr Amery, the Colonial Secretary, visited Cambridge hist yesr and met the overseas men there. He asked Mr Hinton to put in writing his ideas on the interchange of members of University staffs throughout the Empire, and later he asked Mr Hinton to apply for a professorship in Colombo. Sir Ernest Rutherford, in whose laboratory Mr Hinton is working, strongly urged him to do this, nnd said the Otago University could have no reasonable objection to his doing so. as it might have if Colombo were a “tupenny ha’penny post,” and not one of considerable importance. Without any hope of success, he followed the advice given, and was surprised to find himself appointed to a position carrying a good salary, with an allowance and a pension Colombo, in addition to being a sphere for scientific work, also offers to a man of Mr Hinton’s character an opportunity of contributing to the interpretation of Britain to India, and so of doing something to help the Empire in the solution of her Professor Hinton received his primary education in Invercargill under the late Mr W. (i. Mehaffy. nnd was lux of the school at the age of 12. He spent six years in the Southland High School under the rectorship of Mr T. I>. Pearce, and often spoke of his indebtedness to Mr Williams, the Science master on the staff. He made steady rather than rapid progress at school, and showed, as boys often do. that one cannot judge from school (lays the part a boy is destined to play later in the work of the world. Hinton as a schoolboy was. not dull, but Sir Walter Scott was He entered the University in 1913 as the holler of a University Bursary, nnd a Beverlv Entrance Scholarship. In 1910 he obtained the B.Sc. degree. a Beverly Scholarship in Advanced Physics, and the Senior LDiversity Scholarship in Electricity. Later he took his M.Sc. with first-class honours. lie was at the war and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was wounded in Franee and was five months tr hospital. , On his return to New Zealand, as there did not appear to be many opportunities of advancement as a student of physics, he started medicine, but, after a session he concluded that whatever opportunities medi cine afforded, the subject did not appeal to him as physics did. and so he reverted to his old studies. In 1920 he was appointed Lecturer in Physics in the University and Tutor in Knox College and Assistant to the Master As a teacher Mr Hinton proved that, like hi s chief, he had the faculty of scientific exposition in a high degree As an administrator, under conditions of considerable diffi •ulty and delicacy, he showed a coin bin a tion of wisdom and strength much beyond his years.

The University Council granted Mr Hinton leave to go to Cambridge during 1925 1926 for further study. He was fortunate in getting into the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir Ernest Rutherford who on his recent visit to New Zealand speke kindly of him and has treated him with consideration from first to last. Now his work will lie in the East, in the only city of the East known to many tourists. To the hundreds of voung persons who have come up to the University Mr Hinton’s career may well act as an incentive. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, nor had he the smallest silver coin in the pocket of his christening robe. What student of Otago who has done any good was born with a silver spoon in his mouth? I can name off-hand a considerable number of Otago men who have got somewhere, whose parents were poor or comnarativelv poor, with annual incomes nearer £250 than £2500. These poor men’s sons, of course, could not have done what they have done without scholarships provided bv the Government, by the University Senate, and by private persons. I belive a scholar ship was the projectile force that set Sir Ernest Rutherford off on his extraordinary tourneys among planets, stars, and atoms. I think the University professors and all scholarship holders might well gather at the beginning of each session, and stand with uncovered heads and say, “God bless the Minister of Education the Chancellor of the University, and Mr Beverly, and raise up many like them 1” I know that the University is a secular institution, and that University professors are not supposed to pray—at least not in public—but there is a good precedent that might be pleaded. The rotarians do something like it. The rotarians attract and please mo. They are so contented with their religion. *‘Con tented’* is not a strong enough word; they rejoice over it as men who have made a discovery of something new. As a matter of fact Mr Beverly was a rotarian, so was Moses, and so was One greater than Moses. A good test of religion is that it should make its possessor happy, and that he should make others happier. All religions don’t do this, but Rotary answers the tost very well, bo far ns I can Judge from the speeches of the fathers and brethren gathered here in their annual General Assembly. They ore a merry lot, and seem to interrupt their proceedings frequently by standing to sing the doxology. “The H.,” an army institution, might also he pleaded ns n precedent; it has a ritual of remembrance.

Precedent or no precedent, the University professors and scholars might well gather each year to bless the memory of men like Mr Beverly. Whether Professor Hinton has ever blessed his memory, nnd the wise way in which he made his'will—stating his preferences, but not making them mandatory—l cannot say; but if not, he should begin to do so at once.

I have no shale of doubt that there Is no investment that a man can make which yields anything like the returns that money yields when it is put into the full development of young men and women, and into institutions that are primarily concerned with such development. Frederick Harrison, when speaking at a Free Public Library near London, the gift of a citizen, said that the benefaction was an example of public spirit which was far more common in the United States than in England. Mr Harrison thinks that in the matter of public libraries, the English come behind Germans, Scandinavians, Hollanders, Belgians, French, and certainly Americans. That was said before the days of Mr Carnegie, an Americanised Scot, and may not be true now. Dunedin is generally regarded as the America, according to Harrison’s estimate, of the University towns of New Zealand in the matter of gifts to education, but there is still much land -to he possessed. I shall he glad to act as land agent for anyone seeking a good investment.