William Garnett and Hugh Munro Ross

“ In 1846, when only twenty-two years of age, he accepted the chair of natural philosophy in the university of Glasgow, which he filled for fifty-three years, attaining universal recognition as one of the greatest physicists of his time. The Glasgow chair was a source of inspiration to scientific men for more than half a century, and many of the most advanced researches of other physicists grew out of the suggestions which Thomson scattered as sparks from his anvil. ”

“ Extreme modesty, almost amounting to diffidence, was combined with the utmost kindliness in Lord Kelvin’s bearing to the most elementary student, and nothing seemed to give him so much pleasure as an opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of the humblest scientific worker. The progress of physical discovery during the last half of the 19th century was perhaps as much due to the kindly encouragement which he gave to his students and to others who came in contact with him as to his own researches and inventions ”

“ One of his earliest papers dealt with the age of the earth, and brought him into collision with the geologists of the Uniformitarian school, who were claiming thousands of millions of years for the formation of the stratified portions of the earth’s crust. Thomson’s calculations on the conduction of heat showed that at some time between twenty millions and four hundred millions, probably about one hundred millions, of years ago, the physical conditions of the earth must have been entirely different from those which now obtain. ”