Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait - School of Mathematics ...

ADVANCED CLASS LECTURES 21
in mathematics, studied the first three sections of Newton's Principia. This
home work was however purely voluntary even when, under the later
regulations, the attendance of students at the examinations on the Class
Lectures became compulsory.
To the advanced student able to follow him Tait was not merely a superb
lecturer but was also a great natural philosopher and mathematician. The
more abstruse the subject the more clearly did Tait seem to expound it.
The listener felt that here was a master who could open the secrets of the
universe to him. Unfortunately, when deprived
exposition, in the easiest of English speech,
of the aid of Tail's lucid
of the knottiest mathematical
or physical problems, the student, now left to himself, felt that his original
ignorance was doubled.
In the Advanced Class Tait treated dynamical science in the manner of
" Thomson and Tait." He does not seem to have kept notes of his course, but
simply to have prepared his ideas the night
before the lecture. In the earlier
days down to about 1876 he used as a guide the elementary treatise known as
"Little T and T'." Following the sequence of ideas there set down he
developed the subject by use of the calculus. After 1876 he used for lecture
notes a set neatly written out by his assistant, now Professor Scott Lang of
St Andrews ;
but later he found his Britannica article on Mechanics with
interleaved blank sheets more suitable for his purpose. In the end he
lectured along the lines of his own book on Dynamics, which was largely
a reprint of the Mechanics article with important additions on Elasticity and
Hydrodynamics.
One outstanding feature of Tait's style of lecturing was its calm,
steady, emphatic strength. He never seemed to hurry ;
and
yet the ground
covered was enormous. Was he for example establishing the general equations
Bit by bit the expressions were formed, each added item
of hydrodynamics .-*
being introduced and fitted on with the clearest of explanations, until by a
process almost crystalline in its beauty the whole formula stood displayed.
All was accomplished with the minimum of chalk, but with sufficient slowness
to allow of the student adding the running commentary to his copy of the
formulae. The equations only and their necessary transformations were put
on the black board, the student being credited with sufficient alertness of mind
and agility of hand to supply enough of the explanation to make his notes
remain intelligible to himself.
Though broadly the same, his advanced course varied in detail from year