XVI. LORD KELVIN IN HIS CLASS-ROOM AND LABORATORY 279 XVII. PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES--HONOURS AND DISTINCTIONS--LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH 299 CONCLUSION 305 INDEX 317 CORRIGENDUM Page 105, line 9 from foot, for ∂e + O read ∂e + o LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS _To face page_ LORD KELVIN (photogravure) _Frontispiece_ LORD KELVIN IN 1846 64 VIEW OF OLD COLLEGE 70 LORD KELVIN CHAPTER I PARENTAGE AND EARLY EDUCATION Lord Kelvin came of a stock which has helped to give to the north of Ireland its commercial and industrial supremacy over the rest of that distressful country. His ancestors were county Down agriculturists of Scottish extraction. His father was James Thomson, the well-known Glasgow Professor of Mathematics, and author of mathematical text-books which at one time were much valued, and are even now worth consulting. James Thomson was born on November 13, 1786, near Ballynahinch, county Down. Being the son of a small farmer he was probably unable to enter on university studies at the usual age, for he did not matriculate in Scotland until 1810. The class-lists of the time show that he distinguished himself highly in mathematics, natural philosophy, and classics. An interesting incident of these student days of his father was related by Lord Kelvin in his installation address as Chancellor of the University in 1904, and is noteworthy as indicating how comparatively recent are many of the characteristics of our present-day life and commerce. James Thomson and some companions, walking from Greenock to Glasgow, on their way to join the college classes at the commencement of the session, "saw a prodigy--a black chimney moving rapidly beyond a field on the left-hand side of their road. They jumped the fence, ran across the field, and saw, to their astonishment, Henry Bell's 'Comet' (then not a year old) travelling on the Clyde between Glasgow and Greenock."[1] Sometimes then the passage from Belfast to Greenock took a long time. Once James Thomson, crossing in an old lime-carrying smack, was three or four days on the way, in the course of which the vessel, becalmed, was carried three times by the tide round Ailsa Craig.