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William Thomson: An Introductory Biography 9
Or, more alarmingly for some, another old student, John Hutchison, recalled ‘Sir
William unfortunately believed that everybody could learn mathematics’. 23
However, the fact that Thomson was a dynamic communicator with an
infectious sense of enthusiasm is clear. During the 1882 British Association meeting
at Southampton Thomson gave an evening discourse, and one member of the audience
that night recalled:
‘Sir William Thomson’s lecture . . . which was given to a large audience, was good for all
who understood it. But Thomson himself was splendid; he danced about the platform in
all directions, with a huge pointer in his hand; he shook in every fibre with delightful excitement,
and the audience were as delighted as he.’ 24
It captures Thomson as a teacher perfectly—not everyone may have understood,
but it was hard not to be carried along with the lecturer’s enthusiasm. The point is
underlined even further by the fact that the title of Thomson’s talk that night was
what one feels to be the somewhat unpromising topic of the tides.
Thomson would bring the excitement of new discovery to lectures at Glasgow.
Thus, for example, his verification of his brother’s prediction of the lowering of
the freezing point of water under pressure was announced to the class in 1850. Or
again, recalling an experience in 1859 Thomson writes:
One Friday morning I had been telling my students that we must expect the definite discovery
of other metals in the sun besides sodium, by the comparison of Fraunhofer’s solar dark
lines with artificial bright lines. The next Friday morning I brought Helmholtz’s letter with
me into my lecture and read it, by which they were told that the thing had actually been
done with splendid success by Kirchhoff. 25
CREATION OF THE PHYSICAL LABORATORY
On opening the Physical and Chemical Laboratories of University College North
Wales in 1885 Thomson recalled that:
When I entered upon the professorship of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow, I found apparatus
of a very old-fashioned kind. Much of it was more than a hundred years old, little of it
was less than fifty years old, and most of it was worm eaten. Still, with such appliances, year
after year, students of natural philosophy had been brought together and taught as well as
possible . . . But there was absolutely no provision of any kind for experimental investigation,
still less idea, even, for any kind of students’ practical work. Students’ laboratories for
physical science were not then thought of. 26
Thus, shortly after his appointment, Thomson approached the faculty about the
need for new equipment, and found himself knocking at an open door. J. P. Nichol,