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Ohn Trowbridge, S. D., Rumford Professor in Harvard College, and director of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory.
The ‘London Nature,’ in a review of
Dr. George Birkbeck Hill's interesting book, entitled ‘Harvard College by an Oxonian,’ noted the fact that the author had not expatiated upon the remarkable laboratories and scientific collections at
Cambridge, which to the mind of the critic constituted the most noteworthy portion of the university.
When I, too, consider that these laboratories and museums are the growth of hardly more than fifty years, and remember that they already have a world-wide reputation, I feel that the genial
Dr. Hill should have devoted much space to them.
In Sanders Theatre, over the stage, it is told in sonorous Latin how our ancestors founded the university:—
Hic in sylvestibus et in incultis locis Angli domo profugi.
After reading this, if one goes to the
Jefferson Physical Laboratory, and looks at the small cabinet which contains all the physical apparatus which the university had in its struggling days,—1700 to 1800,—a
Benjamin Franklin electrical machine, an orrery, a small telescope, a few models, and some glass jars, and then turns to the modern equipment of the physical laboratory, with its dynamos, its spectroscopes, telephones, and acoustical apparatus, and one studies the equipment of the observatory, of the chemical, biological, and geological laboratories, one feels that small seed has truly borne great fruit in two hundred and fifty years.
The first man of science who lived in
Cambridge was
John Winthrop, a relative of
Governor Winthrop, and professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Harvard College during the years from 1738 to 1779. One can find to-day among the college archives his notebook of his course of lectures.
I was
