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science.
It was there that
Dr. Wolcott Gibbs trained a remarkable band of investigators who are now teaching their science in many universities.
It will be seen from this rapid and incomplete enumeration of the scientific men who have given our city a reputation far beyond local limits, that the remarkable fountain of inspiration which shot up like a great geyser in the fifties has been followed by a stream of patient investigation in well-equipped laboratories.
Where there was one investigator in 1850, there are now hundreds; and can we not say that just as a deluge can lift a host of small craft up to the heights of the peaks once attained by only one or two explorers, it is now more difficult for a scientific man to rise far above his contemporaries.
It is certain that with its remarkable facilities for systematic work in laboratories and museums,
Cambridge is ready for the scientific genius when he is ready to manifest himself.
We are living to a certain extent, however, upon the capital of the past; and the young devotee of science, in remembering the great men in science who have lived and worked in
Cambridge, cannot fail to feel a throb of inspiration in his heart as he reads in the dignified
Latin over the stage of Sanders Theatre:—
Qui autem docti fuerint, fulgebunt quasi splendor firmamenti . . .
Et qui ad Justitiam erudiunt multos, quasi stellae in perpetuas aeternitates.
editor's note.—The Editor cannot permit the above chapter to conclude without a word in regard to its author.
Professor Trowbridge is a prominent figure among the leaders of physical research in this country. He has been active in many lines of original investigation during the past twenty years, and to him is due the principal credit of developing the physical department of Harvard University from a mere cabinet of apparatus and a lectureship to a working laboratory that may well invite comparison with the leading laboratories of the world as to the opportunities offered for advanced research, particularly in the field to which
Professor Trowbridge has of late given special attention,—electrical waves and the electro-magnetic theory of light.
