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preliminary and he demonstrated "in a remarkable manner the difficulties attending this class of investigation". Two months later the British Association awarded him a grant of £15 to enable him to continue his studies. In November 1872 he was delivering Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institution in London and in1873 he contributed to Nature an article dealing with "Recent Researches on the Physiological Action of Light" and in collaboration with his friend Dr McKenrick a paper entitled "Physiological Action of Ozone". In March 1873 we find him lecturing to the Chemical Society on "Dissociation" and at The British Association for Advancement of Science on "Latent Heat of Liquified Gases", the author, we are told, having "deduced a formula for calculating the latent heat of a gas from the known tension of that gas", the results of his investigation having already been communicated to the Chemical Section of which his friend and colleague, Professor Crum Brown, was that year's chairman. Thus the name of James Dewar had become, very early in his career, familiar in the world of science and his reputation as a careful investigator and a pioneer in several fields of enquiry was being established. Early in 1875 Robert Willis the Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University died. His salary had been £300 per annum which the Senate decided to raise to £500 for his successor who was to be obliged "to reside in the precincts of the University for eighteen weeks in every academical year and give no fewer than forty lectures in every academic year". There were five applicants for the office: Rev. J. C. Ellis, who had been Professor Willis's deputy for two years; James Stuart, a Fellow of Trinity College; Professor H.E. Armstrong of the London Institution; W. N. Hartly, Demonstrator of Chemistry in King's College and E, J. Mills, D.Sc., Examiner in Chemistry at London University - all eminent men. But when it became known that James Dewar was being considered they all withdrew. Though not an applicant he was appointed, in April, after an interview and on the strong recommendation of Professors T. Guthrie Tait and Humphrey. The Senate's choice evoked universal approval. The contingent in Nature is typical: "As our readers know, Mr Dewar has already done excellent work and is so widely known as a gifted investigator as well as a first rate teacher that his presence at Cambridge will be a great gain not only to that university but to English science." A strange and unusual condition was attached to the tenure of the Jackonian Chair. By the will of the founder, the professor was charged "to have an eye more particularly to that opprobrium medicorum - the gout". The new holder of the office took this request seriously and carried out a number of experiments, some of which were on himself, with a view to discovering a cure for the malady. " But, "as his friend Henry Armstrong informs us, "the only outcome unfortunately was that he spoiled his own digestion and so, in later years, he had to become an extraordinary careful liver". The thirty-four-year-old professor took up his duties in January 1876 and the subject of his first course of lectures was "Organic and Animal Chemistry". In the following year, out of a total of fifty-seven candidates for the Fellowship of the Royal Society - F.R.S. - who had offered themselves for election, James Dewar was one of the successful fifteen. In the circumscribed but enthusiastic and hospitable society of Edinburgh the young professor had co-operated eagerly with some of the leading scientists in Britain both in research at the university and in discussions at meetings of The Royal Society of Edinburgh. He found the atmosphere in Cambridge less congenial. Cambridge University had been devoted to the humanities for centuries. Conditions for scientific research were primitive. The authorities were as yet reluctant to equate the physical sciences with the other entrenched subjects in the curriculum. James Dewar found that he had to work in a small room in a two-storied building. But there were compensations. He had Clerk Maxwell for a colleague and Professor George Liveing who, though much his senior in age, offered him warm friendship and together, over a period of twenty years, they conducted a large number of experiments in spectroscopy, the results of which were communicated to the world of science in seventy-eight papers in a volume entitled Collected Papers in Spectroscopy by George Liveing and James Dewar. Of his skill as a lecturer The Scottish Leader had this to say: "Professor Dewar is one of the clearest and most interesting lecturers of the day and delivers the most elaborate and difficult discourses without the assistance of even the briefest notes." Fortunate indeed were the students who had such an instructor.
Two years after coming to Cambridge he was chosen to be the Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Institution, London (note 16). Prior to his appointment he had delivered two... NEXT PAGE
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