Volume 1 — BOOKS OF THE MONTH (continued 2)

TEN BRITISH PHYSICISTS. By Alexander Macfarlane. John Wiley & Sons, and Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d. net.

Writing of the life of Rankine, Professor P. G. Tait gave as his opinion that "the life of a genuine scientific man is, from the common point of view, almost always uneventful," and, if the man in question has no interests but science, this is, in general, true. Engaged in researches on the laws of nature, the most that he demands from life is that he shall have his study, his laboratory, food, shelter and peace, and such an attitude does not lead to high adventure or romances of passion. Consequently, in writing biographies of physicists it is advisable not to dwell too long on their everyday life, marriages and meals, for there is a certain monotony about the material lives of these great men. In the lives before us, which are little more than sketches, the author has rightly laid most stress on the scientific achievements of his ten physicists, but he has a tendency to reduce his account to a catalogue of the discoveries and advances made. An estimate of the place of each man in the thought of the time, and of his scientific character, of the general tendencies of his work and the place it now occupies in the history of the science, deserves to take a rather larger place in these short biographies than it has received.

Happily many of the ten are men of very interesting personality. The selection—James Clerk Maxwell, W. J. M. Rankine, P. G. Tait, Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage, William Whewell, Sir G. G. Stokes, Sir G. B. Airy, J. C. Adams, and Sir J. F. W. Herschel—if based on no clearly-defined plan, has the merit that it includes one or two men who have been unduly neglected. Rankine, in spite of his important work on thermodynamics, does not receive much attention from the physicists of to-day, possibly owing to his unattractive "molecular vortices," and Babbage is known to most people rather from the sneer in the Ingoldsby Legends:

than for his really great, though imperfect, achievements. Why Babbage is set down as a physicist, when his whole effort was devoted to the perfecting of calculating machines, we do not know, but the life is one of the most interesting, and makes an attempt to expound the causes—obvious enough, perhaps—of his misfortunes. It is a generous appreciation of an ill-starred genius, now seldom heard of. Whewell, again, is scarcely known as a physicist, but rather as the historian of inductive science; we suppose that his writings on the tides have secured him his place. Joule is mentioned in early life, and was certainly one of the leading physicists of the century, yet he is not among the selected ten—neither, for that matter, is Faraday, so it is evident that scientific prowess has not been the test of admission.

On the whole the ten are versatile men, although no one of them could come near in diversity of performance to the great Thomas Young, who was not only a physicist of the first rank but also a physician, a classical scholar, and one of the first successful decipherers of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Rankine and Whewell were fair poets, and Clark Maxwell deserves higher praise for his verses. His description of Kelvin's reflecting galvanometer, in the form of a parody of Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow," illustrates the ease and finish of his light verse:

The poem is quoted in the life of Kelvin, and two of Rankine's songs are given. We hope that physicists can still show the same accomplishment.

The lives are well written, and, while not a very profound contribution to the history of the science, make very pleasant reading for scientist and layman. There is, however, occasionally a lack of proportion, as when Clark Maxwell's work on electro-magnetic waves receives little attention compared to his other far less important achievements.