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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    whether these constituted the main battery or were merely sup¬ plementary. After Threlfall had left for Australia, J.J. kept up a regular correspondence with him for some years, which has fortunately been preserved. Some extracts from it may be given here. To R. Threlfall, April 13th, 1886, from Brondem, Colwyn Bay, North Wales: I cannot tell you how sorry I am that you are going; every day I spend in the laboratory when you are not there makes me feel that on Monday when we elected you [to the Professorship in Sydney] I did the worst day’s work for myself that I ever did in my life. Trinity College. Oct. 24th, 1886. I daresay you have seen in the papers that we have lost our Master. We were all hoping that Rayleigh would be appointed as I believe he would have taken it, but I have just heard that it has been offered to Butler, the late headmaster of Harrow.* Trinity College. Nov. 14M, 1886. We have been having tremendous discussions with Stuartj* about the New Tripos. He wants to run it so that anyone who goes to his shop and learns filing and fitting and a little (very little) mathematics may get the highest honours without knowing any physics at all. We naturally object, and the consequence is we have the most tremendous rows at the Physics and Chemistry Board—What will ultimately come of it I cannot say. Trinity College. Feh. yd, 1887. I am pretty busy this term as Glazebrook is not strong enough to do his demonstrating and I am having to do it for him.... I went to see Gilbert and Sullivan’s new piece, Ruddy-gore, last Saturday; it is a strange mixture of good and bad. The first act is, I * Dr Butler was in fact appointed. It was not in Rayleigh’s character to decide on what he would answer to any proposal until it was actually made. He said much later that it would have been creating a precedent to appoint anyone not in Orders, and that he did not think the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, could well have made such a precedent in favour of a relative of his own. He said, moreover, that he should not have known whether to accept the Mastership or not, and was glad to be spared the decision, f James Stuart, Professor of Mechanism, 1875—89. Afterwards entered Parliament as a liberal.