Abstract
IN his presidential address on January 24 to the Physical Society on “Some Reminiscences of Scientific Workers of the Past Generation, and their Surroundings”, Lord Rayleigh urged that the history of science is quite as much involved with the personalities of the men who have made it as is any other kind of history. He suggested that some knowledge of the personalities of the scientific workers of past generations, the conditions of their lives and the points of view from which they worked can often provide a useful corrective to the limitations, narrowness and sacrifice of historical perspective that all too frequently result from the familiar, but necessary, process of digesting original memoirs into text-books. He described many details and incidents, specially valuable and interesting because they derived from personal friendship and acquaintance with the subjects themselves, of Kelvin in his later years, of Dewar and his work at the Royal Institution, of Dewar's remarkable and gifted assistant, Lennox, and his very important share in the liquefaction of hydrogen, of Crookes and his many interests, and of Schuster, an unfortunate victim of the hysterical spy-mania prevalent in England in the early years of the Great War. Lord Rayleigh further urged all those with the good fortune to be in personal contact with the great workers of the generation above them to record such knowledge of this kind as might possibly be valued by posterity, a duty, he considers, which has been too little regarded in the past.
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Victorian Physicists. Nature 137, 180 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137180c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137180c0