Dr. Balfour Stewart, F.R.S.

Abstract

IN the genial Manchester Professor the scientific world has lost not only an excellent teacher of physics but one of its ablest and most original investigators. He was trained according to the best methods of the last generation of experimentalists, in which scrupulous accuracy was constantly associated with genuine scientific honesty. Men such as he was are never numerous; but they are the true leaders of scientific progress:—directly, by their own contributions; indirectly, though (with rare exceptions) even more substantially, by handing on to their students the choicest traditions of a past age, mellowed by time and enriched from the experience of the present. The name of Stewart will long be remembered for more than one striking addition to our knowledge, but his patient and reverent spirit will continue to impress for good the minds and the work of all who have come under its influence.