BOOKS OF. THE DAY
By PROFESSOR E. N. DA C. ANDRADE, F.R.S.
IT is related that a Manchester councillor of other days, dilating on the disadvantages of education, remarked in support of his views, " Years ago there was a little boy called Joey Thomson at school here, who was always top of his form, and took all the prizes, and who's ever heard of Joey Thomson since ? " As a matter of fact Joey Thomson of Cheetham, Manchester, became Sir Joseph John Thomson, affec.tionately known to all Cambridge men, and to most others, as " J. J.," who may justly be called, if any one man can claim the title, the father of modern physics. I well remember that, when I went to work at Heidelberg in 1910, the first question asked in the laboratory was whether I knew J. J. (or I. I., as they called him) Thomson, and when, inter- preting the word " knew " in a liberal sense, I replied that I did, I felt that I had done something to establish myself as a physicist among my fellow researchers. The Master, Master of Trinity College as well as Master of his science, reaches the age of eighty in a few days, and has celebrated the occasion by publishing his reminiscences.
It is a full life on which he looks back. An undergraduate at Trinity, under the Mastership of the legendary W. H. Thompson, when Stokes, Cayley and Adams, each a giant, were active in instructing as well as in inventing, using the word in its old sense, and when queer characters abounded ; Fellow of Trinity at the age of twenty-three ; Cavendish Professor of Physics at the age of twenty-seven ; already famous as a mathematician in 1897, when he made known the first of his classic experimental researches which established the existence and properties of the electron ; leader of the most famous school of physical research in the world from that date until his retirement from the Cavendish Professorship in 1918, and since then Master of Trinity ; a well-known and well-loved figure lit America ; an active member of the Board of Inventions and Research during the War ; the friend of nearly every celebrated intellect in Cambridge and of many out of it. Through all this J. J. moves not as the man of science of the popular story, strange and aloof, but a figure keenly interested in his fellow men, in athletics, in physical investigations, in educational policy, and, above everything, in all that concerns his dear University and dearer College, in its history, its traditions and its reforms.
The book opens with a description of early days in Manchester, in particular of Owen's College, the small beginning from which the flourishing University of Manchester sprang. Small as it was, there were great men there, Osborne Reynolds, Roscoe, Balfour Stewart, names still revered by men of science, and J. J. gives us a living picture of their work and personalities. We pass on to Cambridge, with the great figures of sixty years ago and the manners of other times, concerning which we must quote one anecdote, " I got an illustration of the change which had come about, in a conversation I had with a bootmaker early in the century. I said I hoped trade was good. No, Sir,' he said, it is not. Things are very different now from what they were when you were an undergraduate. You will hardly believe me, sir, when I tell you that I have not met what I should call a really extravagant gentleman for more - than three years.' Well, Mr. —,' I said, ' what would you call an extravagant gentleman ? " Sir,' he said, I should call a gentleman extravagant if he had more than two pairs of boots a week." The early days of the Cavendish laboratory naturally receive much attention. In 1895 graduates of Universities other than Cambridge were admitted as ",ResearehStudentfi," Recollections and Reflections. By Sir J. J. Thereson, 0.M.,
(Bell.-18 0 _ _ _ - - and the moment that the regulation came into force Rutherford, Townsend and McClelland joined the laboratory, quite a good entry for one term. Reminiscences of visits to Annerica apd Canada follow, and bring us to War Work and Cambridge in War time, with stories of mad inventors, such as the man who wanted £7,000,000 for a scheme involving a ring of iron poles, each a quarter of a mile high, swinging bags of dynamite round them, who had to be considered because he was receiving newspaper support. There is a living picture of •Lord Fisher. " I cannot understand-," he says, among other things, " why X, who is a man of first-rate ability and has done good work, has never received any official recognition : some say'it is because he has a wife in every port, and never goes to bed sober ; but trifles like that won't explain it." J. J. always got on very well with Fisher, which shows that our Master is scarcely the typical don.
A special chapter is devoted to reminiscences of Trinity men ; what is written of A. E. Housman is particularly inter- esting, for it gives at first-hand his views on poetic inspiration. The book concludes with two chapters dealing with physics in a general way, one mainly concerned with the author's own work, and the other with some of the most important contemporary advances. These are written in a manner generally intelligible, and are by no means for physicists only. Einstein's reply when asked what effect the theory of relativity would have on religion : " None. Relativity is a purely scientific matter, and has nothing to do with religion " may save a good deal.of unnecessary talk. J. J.'s pronouncement concerning general, as distinct from special, relativity, that it " involves much very abstruse and difficult mathematics, and there is much of it that I do not profess to understand " may likewise bring comfort to many stout hearts.
Although he writes concerning his own work, strangely enough our author says nothing at all of his two great books, Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, and The Conduction of Electricity through Gases, the latter known for years as the Cavendish Bible. The gospel which it contained spread through the scientific world, and it, more than any other single book since Clerk Maxwell's masterpiece, influenced the trend of physical research. This is a matter which concerns the physicist : the general reader will, perhaps, be more interested in the Master's opinion; on Cambridge cricket, Guy Butler's quarter mile, Eusapia Palladino's mediumship, Will Rogers, the examination system and water divining, to quote a few of the subjects of his lively comment.
It is a source of satisfaction to the man of science to observe, at banquets, how much better, in general, his colleagueS. and co-workers speak than the professional speakers, the lawyers and the politicians. He will find a similar satisfac- tion in noting how admirably written are these reminiscences, how clear and flowing is the narrative, how lively the descrip, tion of persons and things, how economical the 'phrasing., What better description of a voyage in a big liner and the Oxford-Cambridge situation than " It was not, however,- very nautical, for we saw a great many waiters and very few sailors. The incident I remember most vividly was the arrival of the news, a few minutes after the race had ended; that Oxford had won the boat race ; this was not expected and has not occurred again" ? The book forms a. fitting part' of the author's services to se!ence, for in it he shows to the general public that the greatest man of science may be humane,- witty, wise and brcalmincled,---in short, a complete man, and not the perverted misrepresentation which ignorance often. presents. --
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