Lord Kelvin Part 16

Thomson's concentration on the work in hand, and his power of simply taking possession of men, even mere spectators, and converting them into a.s.sistants, was often shown in the laboratory. Several men who have since become eminent were among the a.s.sistants enrolled from the laboratory students. Professor W. E. Ayrton and, later, Professor John Perry, were students at Glasgow for a time, and rendered the most able and willing help in the researches which were then proceeding. This power was, no doubt, the secret of his success in gathering round him an enthusiastic corps of laboratory workers in the early years of his professorship, and it was shown also by the ease with which he annexed the Blackstone examination-room and, later, various s.p.a.ces in the new University buildings. There, after a time, the Natural Philosophy rooms were found by the senatus to include not only the original cla.s.s-room, laboratory, etc., but also all the spare attics and corridors in the neighbourhood, and even the University tower itself! One of his colleagues, who venerated him highly, remarked recently, "He had a great faculty for annexation!"

The incident referred to occurred while he was preparing the article on Heat for the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. It seemed at first a pity that Thomson should undertake to write such articles; but in the course of their preparation he came upon so many points on which experimental information was wanting, and inst.i.tuted so many researches to answer his questions, that the essays took very much the character of original papers. In the article on Heat (he also wrote Elasticity), will be found a long account of "Steam Thermometry," that is, of thermometers in which the indicating substance was to be the saturated vapours of different substances, water, sulphurous acid, etc., etc., for he did not limit the term "steam" to water-vapour. For some time every one in the laboratory was employed in making sulphurous acid, by heating copper in sulphuric acid in the usual way, and condensing the gas in tubes immersed in freezing mixtures; and the atmosphere of the room was of a sort which, however noxious to germs of different kinds, it was a little difficult to breathe. One morning, when all were thus occupied, an eminent chemist, who had just come home from the south for a vacation, called to pay his respects. After a word or two of inquiry as to how his young friend was prospering in his new post, Thomson said, "We are all very busy brewing liquid sulphurous acid, for use in sulphurous acid steam thermometers; we want a large quant.i.ty of the liquid; would you mind helping us?" So, desiring an a.s.sistant to find a flask and materials, he enrolled this new and excellent recruit on the spot; and what was intended to be a mere call, was prolonged into a long day of ungrudging work at an elementary chemical exercise!

CHAPTER XVII

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES--HONOURS AND DISTINCTIONS--LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

It remains to say something of Lord Kelvin's public and practical activities. All over the world he came ultimately to be recognised as the greatest living scientific authority in almost all branches of physics. Every existing learned society sought to make him a Fellow, honorary degrees were showered on him from all quarters. A list of some of the most important of these distinctions is given in the Royal Society Year-Book for 1907; it is doubtful if a complete list could be compiled. He was awarded the Keith Medal and the Victoria Jubilee Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and received in succession the Copley and Royal Medals of the Royal Society of London, of which he was elected a Fellow in 1851, and was President from 1890 to 1895. For several periods of years he was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to which he communicated his papers on heat, dissipation of energy, vortex motion, and many other memoirs.

He was President of the British a.s.sociation at the Edinburgh meeting in 1871, when he delivered a presidential address, noteworthy in many respects, but chiefly remarkable in the popular mind on account of his suggestion that life was conveyed to the earth by a seed, a germ enclosed in a crevice of a meteorite. This was understood at the time by many people as an attempt to explain the origin of life itself, instead of what it was intended to be, an explanation of the beginning of the existence of living things on a planet which was originally, on the completion of its formation by the condensation of nebular matter, red hot even at its surface. On several occasions he was president of Section A, and he was constant in attendance at the a.s.sociation meetings, and an eager listener and partic.i.p.ator in the discussions and debates. His scientific curiosity was never at rest, and he dearly liked to meet and converse with scientific workers.

Lady Thomson, who had been long an invalid, died in 1870, and in 1874 Sir William Thomson was married to Miss Frances Anna Blandy (daughter of Mr. Charles R. Blandy of Madeira) who survives him as Lady Kelvin. To her tender solicitude he owed much of his constant and long-continued activity in all kinds of work. She accompanied him on all public occasions, and he relied greatly on her helpfulness and ever watchful care.

In 1892 Sir William Thomson, while President of the Royal Society, was raised to the Peerage, with the t.i.tle of Baron Kelvin of Netherhall, Largs; and more lately he was created a member of the Order of Merit and a G.C.V.O. His foreign distinctions were very numerous. He was a Knight of the Order _Pour le Merite_ of Prussia, a Foreign a.s.sociate of the Inst.i.tute of France, and a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. But no public honour or mark of royal favour could raise him in the estimation of all who know anything of science or of the labours of the scientific men to whom we owe the necessities and luxuries of our present civilisation.

In 1896 the City and University of Glasgow celebrated the jubilee of his Professorship of Natural Philosophy. The rejoicings on that occasion will never be forgotten by those whose privilege it was to take part in them. Delegates came from every country in the world, and kings and princes, universities and learned societies, colleges and scholastic inst.i.tutions of every kind, vied with each other in doing honour to the veteran who had fought for truth and light for so many years, and won so many victories. A memorial volume of the proceedings was published, including a review of Lord Kelvin's work by the late Professor FitzGerald, and a full report appeared in Nature and other journals at the time, so that it is unnecessary to give particulars here. And indeed it is impossible by any verbal description to convey an idea of the enthusiasm with which the scientific world acclaimed its leader, and of the dignity and state of the ceremonies.

In 1899, at the age of seventy-five, Lord Kelvin resigned the Chair of Natural Philosophy, and retired, not to rest, but to investigate more vigorously than ever the properties of matter. One remarkable fruit of his leisure we have in his great book, the _Baltimore Lectures_, in which theories of light are discussed with a power which excites the reverence of all engaged in the new researches and which recent discoveries have called into existence. And it is not too much to say that the means of discussing and extending these discoveries are in great measure due to Lord Kelvin.

During the year 1907 Lord Kelvin performed many University duties and seemed to be in unusually good health. He presided as Chancellor at the installation of Mr. Asquith as Lord Rector on January 11, and in the same capacity attended a few days later the funeral of Princ.i.p.al Story, the Vice-Chancellor, who died on January 13. On April 23 he presided at the long and arduous ceremonies of honorary graduation, and the public opening of the new Natural Philosophy Inst.i.tute and the new Medical Buildings, by the Prince of Wales. As Chancellor he conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws on the Prince and Princess, and took the chair at the luncheon which followed the proceedings, when he proposed in a short and graceful speech the health of the Princess.

He was able to take part also in various political and social meetings, and to give attention to the work in progress at the factories of his firm in Cambridge Street. Lady Kelvin and he left Netherhall, Largs, for Aix les Bains, at the end of July, but visited the British a.s.sociation at Leicester in pa.s.sing. There he heard the presidential address of his old friend, Sir David Gill, to whom he moved a vote of thanks in his usual vivacious manner.

Lord Kelvin had been accustomed for a good many years to spend a month or six weeks in summer or early autumn at the famous French watering-place, from which he seemed always to receive much benefit. For a long time he had suffered from an intermittent and painful form of facial neuralgia, which, except during its attacks, which came and pa.s.sed suddenly, did not incapacitate him from work. With the exception of a rather serious illness in 1906, this was the only ailment from which he had suffered for many years, and his general health was otherwise uniformly good.

Lord and Lady Kelvin returned to Netherhall on September 14, with the intention of going in a day or two to Belfast, to open the new scientific buildings of Queen's College. But, unfortunately, on the day of their arrival Lady Kelvin became very seriously ill, and the visit to Ireland had to be abandoned. His address was, however, read by his nephew, James Thomson, son of his elder brother, and was a tribute to the city of his birth, and the memory of his father.

The illness of Lady Kelvin caused much anxiety for many weeks, and this, and perhaps some incautious exposure, led to the impairment of Lord Kelvin's health. A chill caught on November 23 caused him to be confined to bed; and though he managed for a week or two still to do some work on a paper with which he had been occupied for a considerable time, he became worse, and gradually sank, until his death at a quarter-past ten o'clock on the evening of December 18.

The keen sorrow which was universally felt for Lord Kelvin's death was manifested by all cla.s.ses of the community. In Glasgow every one mourned as for the greatest of the land, and the testimony to the affection in which he was held, and the reverence for his character and scientific achievements, was extraordinary. And this feeling was universal; from all parts of the world poured in telegrams of respectful sympathy with Lady Kelvin and with the University of Glasgow in their bereavement.

The view was immediately and strongly expressed, both privately and by the press, that the most ill.u.s.trious natural philosopher since Newton should rest beside the great founder of physical science in Westminster Abbey, and a requisition was immediately prepared and forwarded by the Royal Society of London to the Dean of Westminster. The wish of the whole scientific world was at once acceded to, and on December 23, at noon, the interment took place, with a state and yet a simplicity which will never be forgotten by those who were present.

Nearly all the scientific notabilities of the country were present, and the coffin, preceded by the choristers and the clergy, while the hymn, "Brief life is here our portion," was sung, was followed round the cloistered aisles from St. Faith's chapel to the choir, by the relatives, representatives of His Majesty the King and the Prince of Wales, by the Royal Society, by delegates from the Inst.i.tute of France, representatives of the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow, and other universities, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (of which Lord Kelvin was president when he died), and of most of the learned societies of the kingdom. Then, after a short service, the body was followed to the grave in the cloisters by the same company of mourners, and to the solemn words of the Burial Service was laid close by where rests all that was mortal of Isaac Newton. There he sleeps well who toiled during a long life for the cause of natural knowledge, and served n.o.bly, as a hero of peace, his country and the world.

CONCLUSION

The imperfect sketch of Lord Kelvin's scientific life and work which this book contains can only give a faint notion of the great achievements of the long life that has now ended. Beyond the researches which he carried out and the discoveries he made, there is the inspiration which his work and example gave to others. Inspired himself by Lagrange, Laplace, Ampere, and Fourier, and led to experimental research by the necessity for answers to the questions which his mathematical expression of the discoveries of the twenty-five years which preceded the establishment of his laboratory had suggested--the theories of electricity and magnetism, of heat, of elasticity, his discoveries in general dynamics and in fluid motion, the publication of "Thomson and Tait," all made him the inspirer of others; and there was no one, however eminent, who was not proud to acknowledge his obligations to his genius. Clerk Maxwell, before he wrote the most original treatise on electricity that has ever appeared, gave himself to the study of Faraday's Experimental Researches and to the papers of Thomson. And if some, like FitzGerald and others, have regretted that the electromagnetic theory of light to which Maxwell was led by Faraday, and, indeed, by Thomson himself, did not meet with a more sympathetic reception at his hands, they have not been unmindful of the source from which much of their illumination has come.

He has founded a school of thought in mathematical physics, of men in whose minds the symbol is always the servant of the ideas, whose motto is interpretation by dynamical processes and models as far as that is possible, who shirk no mathematical difficulties when they have to be encountered, but are never led away from the straight road to the goal which they seek to reach--the systematic and clear formulation of the course of physical action.

And in Lord Kelvin's mind there was blended with a clear physical instinct which put aside all that was extraneous and unessential to the main issue an extraordinary power of concentration on the problem in hand, and a determination that was never daunted by failure, which consented to postponement but never to relinquishment, and which led often after long intervals of time to success in the end. He believed that light would come at last on the most baffling of problems, if only it were looked at from every point of view and its conditions were completely formulated; but he could put what was for the time impossible aside, and devote himself to the immediately possible and realisable.

And as often happens with every thinker, his mind, released from the task, returned to it of itself, and what before appeared shrouded in impenetrable mist stood out suddenly sharp and distinct like a mountain-top before a climber who has at last risen above the clouds.

With the great mathematical power and sure instinct which led him to success in physical research was combined a keen perception of the importance of practical applications. Sometimes the practical question suggested the theoretical and experimental research, as when the needs of submarine telegraphy led to the discussion of the speed of signalling and the evolution of the reflecting galvanometer and the siphon recorder. On the other hand, the mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism had led to quant.i.tative measurement and absolute units at an earlier time, when the need for these was beginning to be felt clearly by scientific workers and dimly by those far-sighted practical men who dreamed--for a dream it was thought at the time--of linking the Old World with the New by a submarine cable. But the quant.i.tative study of electricity in the laboratory threw light on economic conditions, and the ma.s.s of data already obtained, mainly as a mere matter of experimental investigation of the properties of matter, became at once a valuable a.s.set of the race of submarine cable engineers which suddenly sprang into existence.

And so it has been with the more recent applications of electricity. The induction of currents discovered by Faraday could not become of practical importance until its laws had been quant.i.tatively discussed, a much longer process than that of discovery; and we have seen how the British a.s.sociation Committee, led by Thomson and Maxwell, brought the ideas and quant.i.ties of this new branch of science into numerical relation with the units of already existing practical enterprise. The electrical measuring instruments--first the electrometers, and more recently the electric current balances and other beautiful instruments for the dynamo-room and the workshop--which Lord Kelvin invented have brought the precision of the laboratory into the everyday duties of the secondary battery attendant and the wireman.

And as to methods of measurement, those who remember the haziness of even telegraph engineers as to the measurement of the efficiency of electrical currents and electromotive forces in the circuits of lamps and dynamos, in the early days of electric lighting, know how much the world is indebted to Thomson.[26] He it was who showed at first how cables were to be tested, as well as how they were to be worked; it was his task, again, to show how instruments were to be calibrated for practical measurement of current and energy supplied by the early contractors to consumers. He had in the quiet of his laboratory long before elaborated methods of comparing resistances, and given the Wheatstone balance its secondary conductors for the comparison of low resistances; he now showed how the same principles could be applied to measure the efficiencies of dynamos and to make up the account of charge and discharge for a secondary battery.

And if the siphon-recorder and the mariners' compa.s.s and the sounding machine proved pecuniarily profitable, the reward was that of the inventor, who has an indefeasible right to the fruit of his brain and his hand. But Lord Kelvin's activity was not confined merely to those practical things which have, to use the ordinary phrase, "money in them"; he gave his time and energies freely to the perfecting of the harmonic a.n.a.lysis of the tides, undertook again, for a Committee of the British a.s.sociation, the investigation of the tides for different parts of the world, superintended the a.n.a.lysis of tidal records, and invented tide-predicting machines and improved tide-gauges.

Lord Kelvin's work in the theory of heat and in the science of energy generally would have given him a t.i.tle to immortality even if it had stood alone; and there can be no doubt, even in the mind of the most determined practical contemner of the Carnot cycle, of the enormous importance of these achievements. Here he was a pioneer, and yet his papers, theoretical and yet practical, written one after another in pencil and despatched, rough as they were, to be printed by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, form, as they are collected in volume i of his _Mathematical and Physical Papers_, in some respects the best treatise on thermodynamics at the present time! There are treatises written from a more general standpoint, which deal with complex problems of chemical and physical change of means of thermodynamic potentials, and processes which are not to be found set forth in this volume of papers; but even these are to a great extent an outcome of his "Thermoelastic, Thermomagnetic and Thermoelectric Properties of Matter."

In hydrodynamics also Lord Kelvin never lost sight of practical applications, even while pursuing the most intensely theoretical researches into the action of vortices or the propagation of waves. In his later years he worked out the theory of ship-waves with a power which has made more than one skilful and successful cultivator of this branch of science say that he was no mere mathematician, but a man who, like the prophets of old, could divine what is hid from the eyes of ordinary mortals. Of the ultimate importance of these for practical questions of the construction of ships, and the economy of fuel in their propulsion, there can be little doubt. Unhappily, the applications will have now to be made by others.

It is interesting to note that the investigation of waves in ca.n.a.ls with which Lord Kelvin recently enriched the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_ have been carried out by a strikingly ingenious adaptation of the Fourier solution of the differential equation of the diffusion of heat along a bar, or of electricity along a slowly worked cable. Thus, beginning with Fourier mathematics in his earliest researches, he has in some of his last work applied the special exponential form of Fourier solution of the diffusion equation to a case, that of wave propagation, essentially different in physical nature, and distinct in mathematical signification, from that for which it was originally given.

Lord Kelvin's written work consists of the _Electrostatics and Magnetism_, three volumes of _Collected Mathematical and Physical Papers_, three of _Popular Lectures and Addresses_, the _Baltimore Lectures_, a very considerable number of papers as yet uncollected, and the _Natural Philosophy_. But this, great as it was, represented only a relatively small part of his activities. He advised public companies on special engineering and electrical questions, served on Royal Commissions, acted as consulting engineer to cable companies and other corporations, was employed as arbiter in disputes when scientific questions were involved, advocated distinctive signalling for lighthouses and devised apparatus for this purpose, and he was, above all, a great inventor. His patents are many and important. One of them was for a water-tap warranted not to drip, another, for electrical generating machines, meters, etc., was perhaps the patent of largest extent ever granted.

To Lord Kelvin's cla.s.s teaching reference has been made in an earlier chapter. He was certainly inspiring to the best students. At meetings of the British a.s.sociation his luminous remarks in discussion helped and encouraged younger workers, and his enthusiasm was infectious. But with the ordinary student who cannot receive or retain his mental nutriment except by a carefully studied mode of presentation, he was not so successful. He saw too much while he spoke; new ideas or novel modes of viewing old ones presented themselves unexpectedly, a.s.sociations crowded upon his mind, and he was apt to be discursive, to the perplexity of all except those whose minds were endued also with something of the same kind of physical instinct or perception. Then he was so busy with many things that he did not find time to ponder over and arrange the matter of his elementary lectures, from the point of view of the presentment most suitable to the capacity of his hearers. To the suggestion which has lately been made, that he should not have been obliged to lecture to elementary students, he would have been the first to object. As a matter of fact, in his later years he lectured to the ordinary cla.s.s only twice a week, and to the higher cla.s.s once. The remainder of the lectures were given by his nephew, Dr. J. T. Bottomley, who for nearly thirty years acted as his deputy as regards a great part of the routine work of the chair.

It is hardly worth while to refute the statement often made that Lord Kelvin could not perform the operations of simple arithmetic. The truth is, that in the cla.s.s-room he was too eager in the antic.i.p.ation of the results of a calculation, or too busy with thoughts of what lay beyond, to be troubled with the multiplication table, and so he often appealed to his a.s.sistants for elementary information which at the moment his rapidly working mind could not be made to supply for itself.

To sum up, Lord Kelvin's scientific activity had lasted for nearly seventy years. He was born four years after Oersted made his famous discovery of the action of an electric current on a magnet, and two years before Ampere, founding on this experiment, brought forth the first great memoir on electromagnetism. Thus his life had seen the growth of modern electrical science from its real infancy to its now vigorous youth. The discoveries of Faraday in electrical induction were given to the world when Lord Kelvin was a boy, and one of the great tasks which he accomplished was to weave these discoveries together in a uniform web of mathematical theory. This theory suggested, as we have seen, new problems to be solved by experiment, which he attacked with the aid of his students in the small and meagrely equipped laboratory established sixty years ago in the Old College in the High Street. It was his lot to live to see his presentations of theory lead to new developments in his own hands and the hands of other men of genius--Helmholtz and Clerk Maxwell, for example--and to survive until these developments had led to practical applications throughout our industries, and in all the affairs of present-day life and work. His true monument will be his work and its results, and to only a few men in the world's history has such a ma.s.sive and majestic memorial been reared.

He was a tireless worker. In every day of his life he was occupied with many things, but he was never c.u.mbered. The problems of nature were ever in his mind, but he could put them aside in the press of affairs, and take them up again immediately to push them forward another stage towards solution. His "green book" was at hand on his table or in his pocket; and whenever a moment's leisure occurred he had pencil in hand, and was deep in triple integrals and applications of Green's Theorem, that unfailing resource of physical mathematicians.

Saepe stilum vertas quae digna legi sint Scripturus,

the motto which Horace recommends, was his, and he would playfully quote it, pointing to the eraser-pad in the top of his gold pencil-case. He erased, corrected, amended, and rewrote with unceasing diligence, to the dismay of his shorthand-writing secretary.

The theories and facts of electricity and magnetism, the production and propagation of waves in water or in the luminiferous ether, the structure and density of the ether itself, the relations of heat and work, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the const.i.tution of crystals, the theory of music, the practical problems of navigation, of telegraphing under the sea, and of the electric lighting of cities--all these and more came before his mind in turn, and sometimes most of them in the course of a single day. He could turn from one thing to another, and find mental rest in diversity of mental occupation.

He would lecture from nine to ten o'clock in the morning to his ordinary cla.s.s, though generally this was by no means the first scientific work of the day. At ten o'clock he pa.s.sed through his laboratory and spoke to his laboratory students or to any one who might be waiting to consult him, answered some urgent letter, or gave directions to his secretary; then he walked or drove to White's workshop to immerse himself in the details of instrument construction until he was again due at the university for luncheon, or to lecture to his higher mathematical cla.s.s on some such subject as the theory of the tides or the Fourier a.n.a.lysis.

As scientific adviser to submarine telegraph companies and other public bodies, and more recently as President of the Royal Society of London, he made frequent journeys to London. These were arranged so as to involve the minimum expenditure of time. He travelled by night when alone, and could do so with comfort, for he possessed the gift of being able to sleep well in almost any circ.u.mstances. Thus he would go to London one night, spend a busy day in all kinds of business--scientific, practical, or political--and return the next night to Glasgow, fresh and eager for work on his arrival. Here may be noticed his power of detaching himself from his environment, and of putting aside things which might well have been anxieties, and of becoming again absorbed in the problem which circ.u.mstances had made him temporarily abandon.

Genius has been said to be the power of taking infinite pains: it is that indeed, but it is also far more. Genius means ideas, intuition, a faculty of seizing by thought the hidden relations of things, and withal the power of proceeding step by step to their clear and full expression, whether in the language of mathematical a.n.a.lysis or in the diction of daily life. Such was the genius of Lord Kelvin; it was lofty and it was practical. He understood--for he had felt--the fascination of knowledge apart from its application to mechanical devices; he did not disdain to devote his great powers to the service of mankind. His objects of daily contemplation were the play of forces, the actions of bodies in all their varied manifestations, or, as he preferred to sum up the realm of physics, the observation and discussion of properties of matter. But his eyes were ever open to the bearing of all that he saw or discovered on the improvement of industrial appliances, to the possibility of using it to increase the comfort and safety of men, and so to augment the sum total of human happiness.

His statement, which has been so often quoted, that after fifty-five years of constant study he knew little more of electricity and magnetism than he did at the beginning of his career, is not to be taken as a confession of failure. It was, like Newton's famous declaration, an indication of his sense of the vastness of the ocean of truth and the manifoldness of the treasures which still lie within its "deep unfathomed caves." Like Newton, he had merely wandered along the sh.o.r.e of that great ocean, and here and there sounded its accessible depths, while its infinite expanse lay unexplored. And also like Newton--indeed like all great men--he stood with deep reverence before the great problems of the soul and destiny of man. He believed that Nature, which he had sought all his life to know and understand, showed everywhere the handiwork of an infinite and beneficent intelligence, and he had faith that in the end all that appeared dark and perplexing would stand forth in fulness of light.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lord Kelvin's address on his installation as Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, November 29, 1904.