Abstract
THROUGHOUT the world of science there has spread a feeling of profound regret at the death of Mr. Joule, which was announced a week ago in the columns of NATURE. On the evening of the 11th of this month he passed away at his residence in Wardle Street, Sale, near Manchester. For many years past he was in very feeble health. Indeed, as long ago as 1872 it was known publicly that he was far from strong. In that year he was President-elect of the British Association, but before the time of the autumn meeting he was obliged to relinquish the honour on account of physical weakness; and Prof. Williamson was called upon to occupy the position. In recent years Mr. Joule was living in complete retirement, carrying on, so far as his health would permit, such observations and experiments as could be conducted without bodily fatigue; and during this period he was able to edit with occasional brief notes, the two volumes of his collected papers which have been published by the Physical Society of London. The first of these important volumes appeared in 1884, and was noticed in NATURE (vol. xxx. p. 27). The second was published in 1887 (see NATURE, vol. xxxv. p. 461), and contained the papers which Joule wrote jointly with Dr. Scoresby, Sir Lyon Playfair, and Sir William Thomson. At the end of the latter volume there is a list of no less than 115 contributions to the various scientific societies and journals which were enriched by communications from his pen. The papers of Joule are remarkable in form as they are in substance. Of mathematics there is scarcely a line; but they are models of clearness, of depth, and of penetration into the hidden things of Nature; and the mathematician finds the experimental results stated and arranged in such a manner as to lend themselves readily to representation in mathematical symbols. Of experimenting he was a perfect master—full of elegant device, and clear in mind as to points of difficulty and places where error might creep in. That which, in the hands of almost anyone else, would have proved too difficult to lead to a trustworthy conclusion, in his hands was often made to yield an important law or generalization, or to afford an accurate numerical result.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
James Prescott Joule. Nature 40, 613–614 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/040613a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/040613a0