Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/75

 papers have more of the stamp of a genius. He has strong opinions on most subjects, and like most Irishmen, he is not afraid of a controversy. If Tait made a move and was not immediately successful, he was apt to retire resolved to have nothing further to do with it; not so Thomson; if baffled, he returns to the attack again and again. On social matters he has strong conservative opinions; at a club meeting after the regular meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh he was asked: "Sir William! what do you think? Should a man be allowed to marry his widow's sister." "No sir, the Bible forbids it, and I hope the law of the land will continue to forbid it."

Sir William Thomson visited America at the time of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, 1876, and he brought back to Scotland a wonderful account of Graham Bell's telephones. In 1884 he made another visit, to deliver a course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. This course of lectures, twenty in all, treated of the wave-theory of light, principally with the outstanding difficulties of the theory, and they partook largely of the nature of conferences. "Discussion did not end in the lecture-room; and the three weeks over which the lectures extended, were like one long conference." He was also a member of the Commission which solved the problem of harnessing Niagara.

In 1892 he was created a member of the House of Lords, under the title of Baron Kelvin. He took his title from the stream which flows past the hill on which the University of Glasgow is built. In 1896 the jubilee of his professorship was celebrated with great éclat at Glasgow. The exercises lasted three days and there were present representatives from all the scientific institutions of Great Britain, and from many of the scientific institutions of other countries. After a further tenure of three years, he resigned his chair. He now spends his time mostly at his country seat at Largs on the coast of Ayrshire, and at his house in London. The degrees and honors conferred upon him are numbered by hundreds, and the enumeration of these honors might be most briefly made by mentioning the