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she attended was about maggots and that the lecturer showed creepy crawly things on a sheet. For maggots read magnets and for creeping things read shadows of iron filings! In most cases the audience came away considerably enlightened and, like Oliver Twist, asking for more and some there were in whom was kindled the desire to undertake serous study. Not every man of great scholarship can adapt himself and his learning to the juvenile mind. But once again the versatility of James Dewar and the lecturers associated with him is vindicated. The titles of the lectures which he himself gave were such as to arouse the curiosity of intelligent youth, as the following half dozen culled at random from a very large number will show: Atoms – Alchemy related to modern science – The story of a meteorite, with experimental illustrations – Frost and Fire – Clouds and Cloudland – Air, gaseous and liquid. James Dewar had for long been interested in photography not only as forming a means of investigation but as a method of permanently recording observations which could be studied at leisure and had made use of it in the research which he conducted with Professor Liveing. To young people, who were becoming increasingly interested in photography – and there were many such – his lectures in 1888 when his subject was, The chemistry of light and photography, must have been particularly interesting. Arrangements were made for the introduction of a powerful beam of electric light equal in intensity to a sunbeam, into the theatre for the photographic experiments he was to make. If the juvenile audience were interested in what he had to say they were invariably enthralled as they watched the magician wave his magic wand in the experiments which accompanied the spoken word. Other lecturers sometimes resorted to more flamboyant means to interest their audience. Once a theatrical production was staged in which a group of children carefully chosen and trained illustrated the discovery of the planet Neptune by de Berrier. On another occasion, Professor James Kendall, speaking about young chemists and great discoveries, delivered his lecture on Faraday dressed up to impersonate the celebrated scientist. On still another occasion the lecturer brought in a young pet jaguar who was given a dish of milk on the lecture table, which he lapped up very quietly, in marked contrast to the growls and snarls with which he tackled a piece of raw meat, illustrating how the taste of blood aroused his more savage instincts. The same lecturer, on another occasion, introduced a lion cub which allowed himself to be petted. The lecturers in their turn were frequently surprised – and very pleasantly so – by the intelligent questions asked by members of their youthful audience and the knowledge which lay behind these questions. Sir Ambrose Fleming, who was a frequent and popular speaker on these occasions (note 19), often recalled a conversation which he overheard between a father and his schoolboy son. As they retired, the gentleman said to his small son – “I heard everything the lecturer said but I must confess I did not understand all of it.” To which they boy replied – “Never mind, dad, I understood it all right, and when we get home I’ll explain it to you.”
In November 1889 James Dewar who was as ardent a student of the history of chemistry as he was of the science in general became one of the founder members of The Gilbert Club whose aim was to do justice to the memory of William Gilbert, President of the Royal College of Physicians and who, when Francis Bacon was talking about the experimental method of scientific enquiry had begun it and was practising it. In 1600 Gilbert published his De Magnete which marks the starting point of the science of electricity and magnetism. Gilbert, who was born in Colchester and is buried in Holy Trinity Church, may well be regarded as the father of these two subjects. The purpose of the Gilbert Club was to perpetuate his memory, arrange for an English translation of his seminal work, De Magnete and plan for a suitable celebration of the tercentenary in 1900 of its publication.
High piled books in charactry would be needed even to catalogue the products of Professor Dewar’s teeming brain far less discuss them. Thanks to the diligence of Lady Dewar, assisted by a few scientific friends, a small harvest has been gleaned and preserved from the multitude of his papers. Within the scope of a brief record of his life and work it is possible to mention only high points in his busy and crowded career of research and lecturing as a scientist.
Although in the eighteenth century Lavoisier remarked that if the earth were removed to very cold regions such as those of Jupiter or Saturn it atmosphere, or at least a part of it, would return to a liquid condition; the history of the liquefaction of gases does not begin until the following century. John Dalton in one of his essays in 1801 surmised that at a... NEXT PAGE
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