Professor James Thomson

Abstract

PROF. JAMES THOMSON, who died on May 8, after a few days' illness, the result of a chill, was born in Belfast in 1822. He was the son of James Thomson, who was then Lecturer on, and afterwards Professor of, Mathematics in Belfast, and subsequently became Professor of Mathematics in Glasgow University. The father was a highly successful teacher and original investigator in mathematics, and was the author of many important school books. One of these books was, thirty years ago, still the recognized text-book on arithmetic in Ireland, and in all probability still retains its position. It was referred to by its very well-known title the “Thomson,” by Prof. Tyndall in his British Association Address in 1874. We do not need the assurances of contemporaries, which are plentiful, that the two boys, James and William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), made brilliant progress in their father's subject, and exhibited, even in early days, that combination of inventive genius and painstaking effort for accuracy, which have been their great characteristics since. James took his M.A. degree at Glasgow, served an apprenticeship under Sir William Fairbairn, and practised in Belfast as an engineer. He held the appointments of engineer to the Belfast Water Commissioners and to the Lagan Canal Navigation Works. In 1857 he became Professor of Civil Engineering in Queen's College, Belfast, and his Belfast pupils are to be found occupying high positions in every part of the world. He succeeded Rankine in Glasgow in 1872, and resigned the Professorship at Glasgow in 1889 because his eyesight was failing. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877. He received the honorary degrees of D.Sc. from the Queen's University of Ireland, and of LL.D. from Glasgow and from Dublin. In 1853 he married the only daughter of the late Mr. William John Hancock, J.P., of Lurgan, Co. Armagh, and it is a pathetic circumstance connected with his death, that she and one of his daughters survived him only a few days. He leaves a son and another daughter.