Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/115

 prepared to defend in Latin against as many opponents. For instance Airy submitted the following theses:

An apponent was appointed to attack each thesis. The discussion was carried in the Latin language under the direction of a Moderator; and when the high men were engaged, the spectacle was sufficiently interesting to draw a great crowd of undergraduates. The statutes framed in the time of Queen Elizabeth, required that a candidate should keep a certain number of such acts; at this time all excepting the two mentioned were gone through as a matter of form. Airy's practice in Latin enabled him to acquit himself with high distinction. A few years later the respondent and opponents reduced the procedure to a farce by concocting their arguments beforehand, and the system was suppressed in 1830. This procedure explains the term wrangler and senior wrangler; the contest was originally a wrangle in the Latin language. In Airy's time there was a further tripos examination conducted partly in writing, partly viva voce in English. Airy came out Senior Wrangler, very far ahead of the next man. The year before Peacock had introduced a paper of questions entirely on the Differential Calculus, a procedure which definitely established the study of the continental mathematics at Cambridge University.

After graduating as B.A., Airy continued to read for the fellowship examination, and to take pupils, generally four in number. He was now elected a member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. During the vacation he went on a geological tour in Derbyshire, visiting among other places Edensor, near Chatsworth, the principal residence of the Duke of Devonshire. His introduction was to the rector, the Rev. Richard Smith, a Cambridge man; he fell in love with the eldest daughter, and within two days proposed an engagement to marriage. This was before he entered the competition for fellowship, and in view of the rules then in force about the