THE LATE LORD KELVIN

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2072, 26 December 1907, Page 3

THE LATE LORD KELVIN

SKETCH OF HIS CAREER. Plain William Thomson he was at the start, becoming better known afterwards to the scientific world as Sir William Thomson. He came of a race of sturdy Ulster or Scotch-Irish farmers, and was born 2oth June, 1824, in Belfast. Biit when he 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 he received from his father a thorough education, entering that seat of learning when but a child, gaining, among other honors, 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, when only fifteen, he went to Cambridge, graduating there in 1845 as second senior'wrangler and winning the highest inath-matioal honor. From Cambridge he went to Paris and studied for a time under Regnault. His activity from the. outset was marvellous. As a boy lio was able to do what - the most accomplished men could not-. To him foil many prizes before he left Cambridge, and he began writing and publishing papers that attracted wide attention while he we 3 yet an undergraduate. As he began so ho continued, a man of vast vitality, intellectual and physical. Ho was tho 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 science, and beside that a great many other things. He. was even a money-maker as an ol-ect-rici-.il expert, and by means of his numerous Inventions, though he had not sought after gain, and while a collego 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 tho burden's of a peerage. As a youth he was an athlete, won the Col'quohoun sculls, -rowed in the ’varsity crew, and was president of the Cambridge Musical _ Society. Moreovor, he was comet’hang of a politician, an ardent Unionist, and it is whispered that his political views had something to do with his being made a lord. Professor Thomson became bir William Thomson because of his unfla>wing interest in the first transatlantic cablV He was electrician on the Agamemnon when the cable was laid, and, l>y means of delicate instruments of his device, the first message underneath the sea was sent. After four hundred such communications tho cable gave out, but the faith of the enthusiastic professor novor wavered. Tu 1860 the Great Eastern laid the new line, and the croakers were for ever silenced ; and for this the seer, true to the scientific vision which had never faded from 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 honors conferred upon linn bv foreign Governments is a long one. The ground for all this distinction lie-towed cannot be detailed here. Th? doctrine of the. conservation of energy Lord Kelvin has had more to do in -nutting into iioiking shape than all the scientists together who have preceded him. The theory to-day of ether, the medium of the transmission of light and electucity throughout the realms of space, is of his elaboration, and Ins conception that what is called matter is merely Porticos— whirligigs as it were—in this ether, is one of the most far-reaching, giving promise oF licinc most fruitful of all the speculation evolved in connection _ with modern physics. But the scientist in this instance in not mainly one ot a speculative mind; lie is intensely intreested in speculation that can be made to work j in Short, is a-practi-cal map.

Whou Lord Kelvin celebrated in 1896 bis jubilee as a professor in G la: go w University, bis students gathered about him from nearly ev.fty corner of tho world, and the representatives of scientific societies then present made as distinguished a company of (learned men as ever was collected in the earth to do honor to one mail. He was three times married. Practically up to the day of his death be was extraordinarily halo and vigorous, notable for every kind of activity, unsurpassed in attainments, unique among scientific workers, a marvel 1 of man. Many of Lord Kelvin’s papers deal with the theory of heat—“On tho Dynamical Theory of Heat”; “On the TherniaU Effects ot Fluids in Motion” (Joule and Thompson) ; “Compendium of Fourier Mathematics for the Conduction of Heat in Solids” : “Elasticity and Heat.” Other papers worthy of special mention are tho following: “On a. Universal Tendency in Nature to flic Dissipation of Mechanical Energy’ : “On the Theory of the Electric Telegraph” : “On the Use of Observations of Terrestrial Temperature for tiie Investigation of Absolute Dates in Geology”; “On the Electro-Dyna-mic Qualities of Metals.”