TWO SCHOLARS

New Zealand Tablet, 7 September 1911, Page 1773

TWO SCHOLARS

In the course of an article on ideas in child-train-ing* H. Addington Bruce in the American Magazine tells the story of Lord Kelvin and his father, James Thomson, an Irish farm laborer, who had fitted himself for college without the help of either skilled teachers or good text-books, and had graduated with honors from the University of Glasgow. At the time of this boy’s birth the elder Thomson was professor of mathematics in a Belfast school. Looking back over the long years of effort it had cost him to prepare for college—he had been nearly twenty-six when he graduated and feeling keenly the lack of education in his own childhood, James Thomson determined that from the first his boy should receive the care and attention which he had had to do without. Furthermore, he felt that if he only began * the child’s education soon enough, and persisted in it vigorously and systematically, he would be able to fit him for the work of later years more effectively than school-bred children are fitted. Literally as well as figuratively he took his son to himself. He made a constant companion of him, even slept with him. He lavished on him a rich Celtic heart full of paternal love. As soon as the little fellow was able to speak he began to teach him his letters. He never wearied of talking with him, always sensibly, always about subjects in which he believed it would be well for the boy to become interested. a History, geography, Latin, mathematics— were matters to which he turned his thoughts before he had reached the age of six. Then, having meanwhile been called from Belfast to Glasgow to occupy the chair of professor of mathematics in his old university, ■ he encouraged his son to attend his lectures and the lectures of other professors, his wish being to discover to which department of knowledge his interest chiefly inclined. Soon it appeared that the study of science, and particularly of physics, made the strongest appeal to the lecture-goer. He frequently attempted, in a juvenile way, to repeat for his father’s benefit the scientific demonstrations he had witnessed in the classelectrical machines and Leyden jars, with which he enthusiastically administered shocks to his playmates. A few months later to be exact, when be was ten

years and three months oldhe was admitted as a regular student in the university. In his first year he was twice a prize-winner, an exploit which he repeated in his second year, while in his third,and fourth he headed the prize list, graduating with the highest honors and a special medal for an essay on ‘The Figure of the Earth.’ 6 T , His future ? It is written large in the annals of British science For it was this same William Thomson who, at the advanced age of nearly eighty-four, died three years ago as Lord Kelvin of Largs, one of the foremost scientists of two centuries. - ■