Frederick Guthrie

Abstract

I WAS glad to see the reference to the late Prof. Guthrie in NATURE of October 14, p. 595. I had the good fortune to know him from 1870 onwards. In my recent Huxley Memorial Lecture (Macmillan and Co., Ltd.), I specially refer to him, in an aside (p. 9), to the way in which he taught real earthly physics, now a lost art, since the retirement of the last of the Mohicans, Prof. A. W. Porter. The student of to-day can only lisp electrons and other letons: heat, optics, sound, even battery-electricity, are no more! Physics is becoming all skittles, without any beer: the game is even puffed by wireless, for general consumption. We need to recover physical sense of proportion. I have, therefore, asked whether someone cannot be found to unearth Guthrie's incomparable practical course—if only to put it away in a case, in the British Museum, as the memorial of a former Brompton civilisation of high degree. Let the course be published, fully explained, together with a proper appreciation of the man and the poet. We have to remember that he was not only all but the last physicist—certainly the last with sense of humour—but also the last physical chemist: both chemist and physicist.