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...of my work”. As a member and first president of The London Old Boys' Club and as a regular subscriber to The Dollar Magazine he kept in touch with his school, grateful not only for the instruction he had received but also for the idyllic environment in which the school is set. "How we all, as boys, used to visit the Glen and Castle Campbell and at the old pile endeavour to relate the exact spot where John Knox dispensed the Sacrament within its walls - and Sheriffmuir, and the rambles over the Ochills and the strolls long the banks of the winding Devon of which Burns sang so sweetly." At the time of his death in 1923 appropriate tributes were paid to his memory in The Dollar Magazine and at a meeting of The Committee of Management of the school by Mr Malcolm the chairman. In reply to a letter of sympathy Lady Dewar wrote: "He always retained great affection for his old school and all its happy memories and it was ever a joy to him to hear of the continued success of Dollar Academy."
"His bright and brief career" at the school over, James, now 17, matriculated as a student in 1859 at Edinburgh University which he attended until 1862 when he stood high in the list of those who gained First Class Honours in chemistry and also won the prize for written answers to questions on the professor's lectures in a competition open to the whole class. With justifiable pride the rector reported at the prize giving ceremonies at The Dollar Institution in 1860 and 1861 the prizes which had been awarded at the university to James Dewar and in 1862 his achievement as a first class honours graduate. From the evidence of books in his library we know what some of these awards were. In mathematics under Professor Kelland he gained, in 1860, the first prize in the second class, a success which he repeated in the following year. In 1861 he took also the first prize in the second division of the natural philosophy class and along with it an award for "Eminent Success" in the same subject under Professor P. Guthrie Tait who had succeeded Professor J. D. Forbes in 1860 and in whose laboratory James had worked in 1859 and "whom he always held in reverent memory". "In these days" wrote Dr J. Y. Buchanan, one of his student contemporaries, "James Dewar could master any subject he had a will to master." He also attended the chemistry class under Professor Lyon Playfair who had succeeded William Gregory in 1858. Unlike his predecessors Playfair appreciated the importance of students being provided with adequate instruction through practical experiments as well as by lectures. So, he founded a laboratory in the Chemistry Department and as the number of students attending his classes made it impossible for him to give practical instruction to them all, he introduced a tutorial system using some of his ablest students to pass on to small groups the instruction which he had given to them. One of the tutors was James Dewar. This brought him into close contact with Playfair who soon realised his exceptional skill as an experimenter and who, we are told, urged James to enter the dyestuffs industry where his talents would earn him the status and income he deserved. But in this matter the student did not follow his professor's advice. On 4th February 1867, Professor Playfair read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper by James Dewar Esq. on the "oxidation of Phenyl Alcohol and a mechanical arrangement adapted to illustrate structure in the non-saturated Hydrocarbons", Dewar himself being not yet a member of the Society; to which he was elected on 15th February 1869. The printing of this paper in The Proceedings of the Royal Society marks the first publication from the pen of James Dewar in the field of scientific research and is the forerunner of a multitude of such papers, whose name is legion, published over the next half century. Between professor and student a close friendship developed and Playfair was one of the guests at James's wedding in 1871. In his autobiography the professor wrote: "I may claim with some pride that many eminent chemists have been evolved from my teaching, among whom Professor Dewar of Cambridge is conspicuous." Many years later, on 9th June 1896, a reception was held by The Chemical Society, of which James Dewar was that year's president, to honour the seven past presidents who had attained their jubilee as members of the Society. In his letter of invitation to Lord Playfair, as the professor had now become, James wrote, "All the foreign members have been invited as well as a number of distinguished guests who are interested in the progress of chemistry and anxious to do honour to the past presidents”. Sadly, Lord Playfair died in May, a month before the dinner took place and in a letter of sympathy to his widow James Dewar wrote of his "lifelong veneration for the departed. He was my master in everything. I owe all to him. His memory will ever remain with me as one of the abiding treasures of my life."... NEXT PAGE
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