INAUGURAL LECTURE (DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE, IN 1883, ON ELECTION TO THE PLUMIAN PROFESSORSHIP)

Summary

I propose to take advantage of the circumstance that this is the first of the lectures which I am to give, to say a few words on the Mathematical School of this University, and especially of the position of a professor in regard to teaching at the present time.

There are here a number of branches of scientific study to which there are attached laboratories, directed by professors, or by men who occupy the position and do the duties of professors, but do not receive their pay from, nor full recognition by, the University. Of these branches of science I have comparatively little to say.

You are of course aware of the enormous impulse which has been given to experimental science in Cambridge during the last ten years. It would indeed have been strange if the presence of such men as now stand at the head of those departments had not created important Schools of Science. And yet when we consider the strange constitution of our University, it may be wondered that they have been able to accomplish this. I suspect that there may be a considerable number of men who go through their University course, whose acquaintance with the scientific activity of the place is limited by the knowledge that there is a large building erected for some obscure purpose in the neighbourhood of the Corn Exchange.