Remarks by Sir William Thomson on delivering the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize to Mr Buchan

Extract

The day may even come when the general public is sufficiently instructed to receive with interest, in ordinary periodicals, the physieo-mathematical papers, which form the staple commodity of this Society, and then we shall have done our work. In the meantime I would venture, like Principal Forbes, to advocate “intellectual clubability.” All tentative essays, which are not yet ripe to form a book or an article, may fitly be contributed to this Society and embodied in its Transactions, and I should have thought that not a single professor of any department in the University could go through the teaching of a session, without coming across at least some one novel point, which it would be worth while to bring forward.