Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/31

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY.
23

rendering even this splendidly equipped hall of science inadequate. The physiological laboratories are many, they are completely furnished with appliances, and a large number of students are there trained annually under the supervision of one of England's most eminent living scientists, Michael Foster, and his scarcely less able associates—Langley, Hardy, and Gaskell. Chemistry, zoölogy, botany, anatomy, and geology have each their well-appointed halls and masterly exponents. The names MacAlister, Liveing, Dewar, Newton, Sedgwick, Marshall Ward, and Hughes are not easily matched in any other one institution. Indeed, it is when one stops to consider the intellects at Cambridge that it becomes a Sir G. G. Stakes, Bart., M. A. . LL. D. Sc. D., F. R. S., Pembroke. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. dangerous matter to institute comparisons, and to say that this discipline or that is most rich in eminent interpreters. In science, at any rate, and in all branches of science, Cambridge stands alone. Not even Oxford can be considered for a moment as in the same class with her. And of all the sciences it is undoubtedly in mathematics and astronomy that the supremacy of Cambridge is most pronounced. The names of Profs. Sir G. G. Stokes and Sir R. S. Ball will be familiar to every reader, while those of Profs. Forsythe and G. H. Darwin and Mr. Baker will be familiar to all mathematicians. In classics Cambridge, while not possessing a similar monopoly of almost all the talent, still holds her own even with Oxford. Professors Jebb, Mayor, and Ridgeway, and Drs. Verrall, Jackson, and Frazer constitute a group of men second to none in the subjects of which they treat. Professor Jebb is also one of the university's two representatives in Parliament. In philosophy Cambridge has two men, Henry Sidgwick and James Ward, the former of whom is perhaps by common consent the first living authority on moral science, while the latter ranks among the first of living psychologists. These men, while representing very different philosophical standpoints.