Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/139

 While undergraduates both Babbage and Herschel attended the lectures of the professor of Chemistry, they helped the professor to prepare his experiments, and they set up private laboratories for themselves. Herschel finished his undergraduate career in 1813 by being a senior wrangler; he also won the first Smith's prize. He was immediately elected to a fellowship in his college. While an undergraduate he wrote a paper on "A remarkable application of Cotes' Theorem," which was published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, and he had no sooner graduated than he was elected a Fellow of that Society. It was his father's desire that he should enter the church, but he himself preferred the profession of the law; so in 1814 he was entered as a student of Lincoln's Inn, London. Residence in the metropolis brought him into intimate relations with the principal scientists of the day; among whom was Wollaston, the physicist (who was the first to notice two or three of the most conspicuous dark lines of the solar spectrum) and South, the astronomer. By Wollaston he was influenced to take up chemistry and optics, and by South to turn his attention to the unfinished researches of his father. The professor of chemistry at Cambridge whom he had assisted was killed accidentally; Herschel applied for the chair, but unsuccessfully. After two years spent in London he returned to Slough with the definite purpose of taking up astronomical research. To this step lines written by himself doubtless refer:

During the six following years he worked at pure mathematics, astronomy, experimental optics and chemistry. It was in these years that he made his principal contributions to