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and to be made the subject of this is rare distinction – the editor wrote that for The Royal Institution “to have found one man with a combination of gifts so well fitted for its objects was great good fortune”. Commenting on how, for more than forty years, the Londoners who were interested in science had enjoyed “the resonant voice, the logical statement and the technical wizardry of the plump and bearded high priest of Albermarle Street”, the writer added that “all who within that period themselves had to address the exacting audiences of The Royal Institution must cherish a warm memory of the crisp and kindly encouragement Dewar used to give them in the trying few minutes before their lecture began. In pure science Dewar was best known by the methods he devised for approaching the absolute zero of temperature and for his study of the behaviour of elements and compounds under conditions so far removed from their normal state in the familiar world… In private life he was a genial host and an interesting companion. He was a fine musician and his collection of objets d’art was noted with admiration even by professional experts. His skill as an expert witness became almost a legend of the courts. He was a great man, vigorous, kindly and combative.” The two national newspapers in his native Scotland – The Scotsman and The Glasgow Herald – also had long and laudatory obituaries. The one in The Glasgow Herald was written by his old friend Professor Andrew Gray. In the course of a detailed account of the splendour of Sir James’s achievements Nature, the science magazine, had this to say: “Our scientific edifice is by his death deprived of one of its main pillars. We shall not easily appraise the loss. The immensity and sustained originality of his genius, the service he rendered to our civilisation can be but insufficiently appreciated outside the small circle of intimates who witnessed his work and who penetrated through the thick mask of modesty and reticence which he habitually wore… At heart he was full of human sympathy, a most gentle and loveable nature.” Cambridge University ended its generous tribute with this sentence: “As an experimentalist Dewar stood alone: there has never been a greater; probably none so great.”
In his will, he stated that “being a member of The Cremation Society he desired his body to be cremated, the funeral arrangements to be of a simple character and kept entirely private and confined to members of his family”. The cremation, we are told in The Times of 2nd April, took place at Golders Green. “There was no service, no congregation, no ceremony of any kind. Before the cremation a service was held in his home at The Royal Institution at which the Bishop of Worcester officiated. And meanwhile the staff paid their last tribute to him at a simple service in his study at The Royal Institution conducted by his old friend Canon Carnegie. The members of the family alone attended at Golders Green.” The Maharaj Rama of Ihalawar, a friend and great admirer of Sir James “paid him a last tribute of regard by a call of condolence at The Royal Institution on Saturday morning. His Highness is recovering from a severe illness and is hardly able to walk”. The net value of his estate was £128,828. He bequeathed to Cambridge University all his scientific equipment in the laboratory there and made a similar bequest to The Royal Institution. He left a sum of £500 to be distributed in cash or gifts to his assistants who had been with him since 1900 and a similar sum to three of his colleagues who were asked to publish, as advisers to Lady Dewar, such of his scientific papers as might be considered worthy of publication. He desired that “no Bursary, Fellowship, Scholarship, Annual Lecture or any other memorial be founded or connected with his name by public subscription and that no biography of his life should be published as a separate book”. Though aware of his wish that no public memorial should be erected to his memory the members of The Royal Institution felt that they would in no way contravene that desire by placing a memorial plaque on the staircase wall of The Institution. So on 12th November 1925 a plaque designed by Sir Bertram MacKinnal was unveiled. It is in itself an attractive work of art worthy of a man whose love for the arts came only second to his devotion to science. In accepting the plaque the Duke of Newcastle referred to Sir James Dewar as one of the greatest men of science of this epoch, a man whose life and example were a priceless legacy to The Royal Institution and would be an inspiration to all who came within its walls. Sir J. J. Thomson, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, spoke of how Sir James had ever delighted them with the amazing beauty of his experiments. “He was an artist to his fingertips. He was essentially an investigator and a pioneer. Three of his discoveries could not be passed over in any tribute. (1) To Dewar they owed the use of liquefied gases as a physical agent, (2) the vacuum flask was not only an important scientific instrument but had largely added... NEXT PAGE
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