L O R D K E L V I N ' S G H O S T
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement"
LORD KELVIN (commonly attributed to) 1900
LORD KELVIN (commonly attributed to) 1900
At the University of Cambridge in England, a Wrangler is a student who has completed the third year (called Part II) of the Mathematical Tripos with first-class honours. The highest-scoring student is named the Senior Wrangler, the second highest-scoring student the Second Wrangler and so on.
Legend has it that Kelvin was so confident that he had come top of the exam that he asked his servant to run to the Senate House and check who the second wrangler was. The servant returned and informed him, "You, sir"! To complete the irony, the final exam required the students to write a proof of a theorem for which Lord Kelvin himself had provided the proof, earlier in the course; unfortunately, because he had created it, it hadn't occurred to him to learn it, and he spent a lot of time working it out from scratch – while the student who achieved Senior Wrangler, Stephen Parkinson, put it down to having committed the proof to memory.
This towering level of confidence in his own opinion dogged Kelvin's career (which was none-the-less, and surprisingly, brilliantly successful).One further, and typical, example of a 'Kelvinism' is in his refusal of an invitation to join the Aeronautical Society, writing that "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of."
Should I make reference in future text to 'LKG' you'll know I am invoking Lord Kelvin's Ghost.
Legend has it that Kelvin was so confident that he had come top of the exam that he asked his servant to run to the Senate House and check who the second wrangler was. The servant returned and informed him, "You, sir"! To complete the irony, the final exam required the students to write a proof of a theorem for which Lord Kelvin himself had provided the proof, earlier in the course; unfortunately, because he had created it, it hadn't occurred to him to learn it, and he spent a lot of time working it out from scratch – while the student who achieved Senior Wrangler, Stephen Parkinson, put it down to having committed the proof to memory.
This towering level of confidence in his own opinion dogged Kelvin's career (which was none-the-less, and surprisingly, brilliantly successful).One further, and typical, example of a 'Kelvinism' is in his refusal of an invitation to join the Aeronautical Society, writing that "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of."
Should I make reference in future text to 'LKG' you'll know I am invoking Lord Kelvin's Ghost.