The life of Sir J. J. Thomson, O. M. : sometime master of Trinity College Cambridge / by Lord Rayleigh.

  • Rayleigh, John William Strutt, Baron, 1842-1919
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life of Sir J. J. Thomson, O. M. : sometime master of Trinity College Cambridge / by Lord Rayleigh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    taining companion. He had a keen zest for the ‘yellow backs’ which preceded to-day’s detective stories—and had a large repertoire of music- hall ditties, of which ‘My Maria’s a fairy queen’ was a favourite. He used to sing these about the house. We may here mention that Mrs Thomson’s sons always spent their summer holidays with their mother, both before and after J.J.’s marriage. She died in 1901. J.J. chose the inscription on her monument: ‘Her children rise up and call her blessed’ (Pro¬ verbs xxxi. 28). J.J. Thomson’s home life had not given him any glimpse of science, and he considered that the decision to send him to Owens College was the turning-point in his life. When there he came under the influence of Balfour Stewart, the Professor of Physics, and worked in his laboratory, which was situated in a series of attic rooms in a house in Quay Street, which had been the home of Cobden, the apostle of Free Trade. There were only about half a dozen students. The work was not much organised, and Thomson afterwards congratulated himself on having been trained under this loosely knit system. Towards the end of his life he said: The teaching I got at Owens College sixty-three years ago was as good as I could get anywhere if I was beginning my studies now. My first introduction to Physics was the lectures of Balfour Stewart. These were so clear that, child as I was, I could understand them. In 1887 he wrote to Mr C.Balfour Stewart: Few can have been so indebted to [your father] as I was, it was he who first gave me a liking for physics and taught me most of what I know, and when I left the college I never saw him without receiving the wisest advice and the kindest encouragement, and now it is all over. Your father was the ideal man of science. No one since Faraday has ever combined such scientific genius and such deep piety. Stewart, on his side, was accustomed to speak of Thomson as his best and most promising pupil. His experimental work in Stewart’s laboratory nearly had a tragic outcome in an explosion of a glass vessel, which injured his eyes. Mr C. Balfour Stewart writes: