, 1908-03-25

eight he went from Belfast to Glasgow,
when his father was appointed Professor of
Mathematics there, and at the age of twenty
two he himself was appointed Professor of
Natural Philosophy 50 that he left the
paternal home to occupy another professori-
al house within the college gates. For fifty
three years he fulfilled the duties of profess.
or, using the time not occupied in teaching
IN working out in his study and laboratory
those great problems aud discoveries which
made his name famous.
To most men, the task Of taking classes
of students year after year through practi-
cally the same course of instruction would
have become very like dru lgery long before
ffty-three years had elapsed, but it was
never so with Lord Kelvin. Up to the end
of his professional days he Showed the keen
est interest in his class-teaching, and to
watch him lecture was to find every moment
some fresh manifestation Of the character of
the man. The simplest experiment, though
he had seen and performed it hundreds of
times, was sufficient to arouse his enthusiasm,
and his happy choice of the commonest
articles Of everyday life as subjects for
experiment was a source Of delight to his
students.
His method of teaching and his conception
of the proper relationship between professor
and students are defined in the following
quotation from his speech at Glasgow Uni
versity at the celebration of his jubilee as
professor.
"To me" he said, "tho professor and his
class OF students are coeficients. follow
workers, each contributing to whatever can
possibly be done by their daily meetings
together. l dislike tho term lecture applied
here. [ prefer the French expression con
faronon' fooI tl,,k ,,,, ,.,,4;, 6
professor with bis students should be rather
Il conference than u pumping-in of doctrine
from the professor, perhaps i'll understood
and not we'll received by his students. The
Scottish universities have enabled us to
carry out this French idea Of conference"
The TEACHER.
Sometimes in the course of a lecture IL
new train of thought would be suggested
to his active brain, and he would at once
branch off from his original subject to fol-
low out his new idea. Those digression3,
If at times bewildering to young students,
were always interesting III themselves and
characteristic Of the man. The writer will
never forget one lecture to the advanced
class, in which at a very carly stage Lord
Kelvin was led away from the study of
carbohydrates to discuss "spook5," and
spent the remainder of the hour and an OK
ira ten minutes at the end of it in pouring
ridicule upon those who would for a moment
consider seriously such rubbish" as CON
verse with spirits from another world. The
target for his remarks was the Society for
Psychjcal Research, before which at that
time some paper had been read which had
reused Lord Kelvin's indignation and led to
q characteristic outburst Of practical com
mon sense. His criticisms on occasions like
these never showed the ~faintest trace of
malice or ill-w!ll, hu were always full of the
spirit of sincerity.
One feature of Lord Kelvin's genius,
which was of the greatest value to him in
his work, was his extraordinary instinct for
physical facts He seemed often to be able
to arrive by intuition at a truth which others
could only discover by u long and laborious
process of analysis. AS an illustration of
this faculty the following incident, reported
to the writer on good authority, may be
mentioned. On one occasion n well-known
scientist, finding in the standard work by
Lord Kelvin and Professor TAFT (Thomson
and Tait's Natural Philosophy u state
ment introduced by the words cit is obvi-
Gus that -" and being unable to appre-
ciate the truth of the statement, proceeded
to work out the problem for himself and took