the reactionaries in Labour disputes as they would with Bol- shevists, and upon the employers to recognize that the working classes could no longer be treated by them as hewers of wood and drawers of water. He welcomed both the bill establishing a Ministry of Health and that establishing a Ministry of Trans- port; but he warned the House of Commons not to expect cheaper passenger fares and freight charges; the railwaymen would not allow themselves to be sweated for the benefit of the travelling public. But, once again, his real activity was outside. In the disputes in March 1919, between the railwaymen and the Government, he was the chief leader of the men, and at a mo- ment of crisis he flew across to Paris to discuss the question with Mr. Lloyd George, then in attendance at the Peace Conference. The terms which he finally arranged with the Government, involving an approximate addition of over 10,000,000 per annum to the railway expenditure, included a standard week of 48 hours, and a standard wage for that week; for the fixing of the new standard rates of wages negotiations were to be con- tinued. In the last week of Sept. he suddenly announced that a crisis had arisen in these negotiations, and after a futile confer- ence with the Government on Sept. 25, a strike began without further notice on Sept. 26. Neither the community nor the Government was intimidated; and Mr. Thomas used his power for peace, and for a settlement, after ten days, on terms not materially different from what the men might have had at first. His efforts for the men had already, it was calculated, amounted to a permanent annual increase in the railway wage bill of 65,000,000, and an increase of 50% which in Aug. 1920 be- came 75% in passenger fares, and more than 50% in goods rates. In 1920 he and his executive were faced by the difficult problem of the refusal of Irish railwaymen to handle munitions of war; and the only solution he and they could suggest was that the Government should cease to send such munitions and that the Labour party should make an appeal to the Irish people a solution which ministers, of course, could not accept. His own policy for Ireland was the gift of Dominion Home Rule. During this year he published a book When Labour Rules, in which he, speaking, of course, only for himself, depicted the kind of policy which Labour in power would favour -such as the right to work, development of nationalization, better homes, shorter hours, state endowment of motherhood, great extension of university facilities and a national theatre and opera.
THOMPSON, SILVANUS PHILLIPS (1851-1916), English
physicist, was born at York June 19 1851, and educated at a school in Yorkshire belonging to the Society of Friends, of which
body he was a lifelong member. He went later to the Royal
School of Mines, having previously received a B.A. at London
University when he was only eighteen. He obtained a B.Sc. from
London University in 1875 with high honours and a D.Sc. in
1878, when he became professor of experimental physics in Uni-
versity College, Bristol. There he began his lectures on electrical
science which brought him invitations to lecture all over the
United Kingdom and made him a power in both the scientific
and industrial worlds. In 1881 appeared his Elementary Lessons
in Electricity and Magnetism, twice reprinted in 1882 and 16
times in the ensuing 12 years. A new edition was called for even
as late as 1914. Two other courses of lectures were published
in volume form, Dynamo- Electric Machinery (1882), and The
Electro-magnet and Electromagnetic Mechanism (1891). By
that time he had removed to London, becoming professor of
Physics in the City and Guilds of London Technical College,
Finsbury, in 1885 and subsequently its principal. He was elected
a fellow of the "Royal Society in 1889. In his desire to bring
science home to the imperfectly educated he published anony-
mously Calculus made Easy by " F.R.S." (1910), written in
colloquial style. His deep interest in religion, which led to his
recognition in 1903 as a minister of the Society of Friends, in-
spired The Quest of Truth (1915) and a posthumous work A Not
Impossible Religion (1918). He also published biographies of
Reis, Faraday and Kelvin. He died in London June 12 1916.
See Silvanus Phillips Thompson, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., by his wife and daughter (1920).
THOMSON, SIR JOSEPH JOHN (1856- ), British physicist, was born near Manchester Dec. 18 1856 and was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and subsequently at Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1880 he graduated as second wrangler. In the same year he was elected a fellow of Trinity College, and became second Smith's prizeman. In 1883 he was appointed lecturer in Trinity College, and in the following year Cavendish professor of experimental physics in the university of Cambridge,
a position he occupied until his resignation in 1918. He developed a great research laboratory of experimental physics, attracting
numerous workers from many countries and colonies; advances
were made in the investigation of the conduction of electricity
through gases, in the determination of the charge and mass of the
electron and in the development of analysis by means of positive
rays. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, be-
came president of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1894,
president of Section A of the British Association in 1896, and
president of the Royal Society in 1915- In 1905 he held the
professorship of physics in the Royal Institution, London, in
addition to his Cambridge professorship. He was knighted in
1908 and awarded the O.M. in 1912. He was the recipient of
many British and foreign awards and honours, amongst these
being the Royal and Hughes medals of the Royal Society in 1894
and 1902 respectively, the Hodgkins medal of the Smithsonian
Institute of Washington in 1902, the Nobel Prize for physics in
1906, enrolment as honorary graduate of many universities,
and as honorary fellow of numerous American and continental
scientific academies. During the World War he presided over
several research committees and he assisted various Govern-
ment departments in an advisory capacity. In 1918 he was
appointed master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the
following year was elected to a newly established professorship
of physics in the Cavendish Laboratory, where he continued to
prosecute his researches. In addition to a large number of
publications in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and the
Philosophical Magazine, he has published A Treatise on Hie
Motion of Vortex Rings (1884); The Application of Dynamics to
Phvsics and Chemistry (1886); Recent Researches in Electricity
and Magnetism (1892); Elements of the Mathematical Theory of
Electricity and Magnetism (1895, 5th ed. 1921); The Discharge
of Electricity through Gases (1897); The Conduction of Electricity
through Gases (1903); and, with Prof. Poynting, a number of
text-books upon physics.
THORNE, WILL (1857- ), British Labour politician, was born at Birmingham Oct. 8 1857. He started work at the age of seven in a ropeworks, attending the wheel of a rope-spinner for ten hours a day, and on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings toiled in a barber's shop. He afterwards became a gas-worker, and in 1889 he helped to found the National Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers, becoming its general secretary. This union (under the title of the National Union of General Workers) had in 1921 a membership of over 600,000. He became a member of the parliamentary committee of the Trades Union Congress in 1894. He was chairman of the Congress in 1912. In 1900 he contested West Ham unsuccessfully in the Labour interest, but in 1906 was elected to Parliament and came to the front as an active and energetic member of his party. At the general election of 1918 he was returned with a majority of 11,505. From 1800 he was a member of the West Ham town council, being elected mayor in 1917. He had been a member of the Social Democratic Federation since 1883.
THORNYCROFT, SIR WILLIAM HAMO (1850- ), English sculptor (see 26.881), was knighted in 1917. His more recent works include the King Edward memorial at Karachi (1915) and " The Kiss" (1916), now at the Tate Gallery.
THÓRODDSEN, PORVALDR (1855- ), Icelandic geographer, was born on the isl. of Flatey, in Breidifjordr, Iceland, June 6 1855, the son of Jon Thóroddsen (see 26.881), the poet and novelist. His father's death in 1868 left the family in poor circumstances, but the boy went to school at Reykjavik and in 1875 to the university of Copenhagen, where he studied natural science and geography. In 1876 he was sent to Iceland by the
