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to the amenities of life who were unaware to whom they owed it. (3) Of special importance was his discovery of the method of producing high vacua by means of charcoal cooled by liquid gas to which the advance of modern physics was in no small measure due.” If Sir James’s devotion to The Royal Institution was total it was emulated by that of Lady Dewar whose home it had been for most of their married life. On vacating their flat, after her husband’s death, she left as a parting gift the beautiful and expensive fittings which she and Sir James had installed.
“He who writes of men of science,” says Thomas Martin in his biography of Michael Faraday, “must recognise that their lives are uneventful in the general estimation. Their discoveries seldom excite any immediate popular interest. Great scientific achievements pass unremarked at the time and the truths the scientist states are usually above the comprehension of the man in the street. Scientific research is the least dramatic of human occupations; patience and perseverance are the qualities it calls for. Its moments of triumph come in the seclusion of the laboratory.” But it is not the passing moment, it is the page of history that is the test of greatness and the greatness of Michael Faraday as of his admirer and successor at The Royal Institution, James Dewar, the verdict of history leaves us in no doubt.
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