Abstract
When your President invited me to deliver the Silvanus Thompson Memorial Lecture this year I was very honoured and also very interested because of the many close connections between Thompson and the Royal Institution of which I am Director at the present time. In 1876, when he was a student at the Royal School of Mines, his professor, Edward Frankland, who had previously held the Chair of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, gave Thompson a ticket which enabled him to attend the Friday Evening Discourses and other lectures. Frankland had a very high opinion of Silvanus' abilities and perhaps, in giving this ticket, he thought of an earlier occasion when Mr. Dance did the same for a young man called Michael Faraday. Thompson attended many lectures at the Institution and indeed seems to have derived more of his education from these than from lectures at the Royal School of Mines. He attended Tyndall's course on electricity, Gladstone's course on chemistry, and discourses by Huxley, Crookes and many others. H...
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
