james alfred ewing 1855-1935 - royal...

JAMES ALFRED EWING 1855-1935

J am es A l f r e d E w in g was born in Dundee on March 27, 1855. In his Engineer's Outlook (1933), an “ olla-podrida of reminiscence and exposition and reflection,” he calls it, he has told in brief his life story of much interest and high achievement. His father, of sturdy farmer stock, was minister of the Free Church of Scotland in Dundee. He had “ come out ” in the Disruption of 1843 ; his mother was the daughter of a Glasgow solicitor. The ministerial household, he writes, “ was an entirely happy one . . . the phrase a refined home may sound banal ; it describes what to me was a potent reality and is still a beloved memory.”

Alfred had two brothers, both a good deal older than himself. O f these, the senior, Robert, went from St. Andrews to Balliol, became a Fellow and Tutor of St. John’s, Oxford, and after holding various livings, died an Honorary Canon of Salisbury.

The second brother, John, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and went out to Australia in charge of a church at Melbourne. He was a keen mountaineer and had much influence on Alfred, his junior by six years. There was a much younger sister, still living, “ who counted for little to the growing boy, but much indeed later to the man and his progeny.”

Such was his family ; his father was absorbed in the heavy calls of his ministerial work ; the care of the boys fell mostly on the mother, who “ made us associate a love of learning with our love of her.” They were at school at Dundee and when the British Association met there in 1867, she took Alfred, at the age of twelve years, to listen to the words of a great master. The interests of the home were chiefly clerical and literary, and he describes himself as somewhat of a sp o rt; his pocket money went in tools and chemicals ; an empty attic was his laboratory ; explosions not infrequently followed his experiments, in which occasionally the domestic cat assisted.

In due time he went to Edinburgh, the first holder of an Engineering Scholarship from Dundee High School, and came under the influence of Tait and Fleeming Jenkin, then Professor of Engineering. Jenkin must soon have recognized that his new student was a man of more than usual ability. He was then in partnership with Sir William Thomson, engaged in making and laying submarine cables ; the University vacation was a long one and Jenkin suggested to Ewing that he should assist in this work during the summer, returning to Edinburgh for the winter session. The offer was accepted and led to three cable-laying expeditions to Brazil and the River Plate.

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During the winter sessions there was research in Tait’s laboratory and with Jenkin. Together they investigated a “ novel type of internal combustion engine which had every merit except that it would not go.” In the Royal Society Transactions for 1877 is a paper with Jenkin on friction between surfaces at low speeds ; they also communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1878 a paper on the wave forms of articulate speech, for which they had made use of Edison’s newly invented tin foil phonograph. But a change was coming. Fleeming Jenkin was asked for advice about a Professor of Engineering for the University of Tokyo and on his nomination, Ewing, in 1878, accepted a three years’ appointment—it was subsequently extended to five—and went out to Japan in 1878. Soon after his arrival he married Miss Washington,* the stepdaughter of a colleague, a great great grandniece of George Washington, and settled down to work in a Japan, “ venerable in its traditions, its art, its manners, its high standard of patriotism and personal duty, but almost painfully young in the veneer of Western culture . . .”

“ To an inexperienced teacher, there was stimulus and help in pupils whose polite acceptance of everything he put before them was no less remarkable than their quick intelligence and receptiveness . . . For quite half a century, two or three of these Japanese youths of 1880 have kept in touch with me as a friend.”

The short experience at Edinburgh had fostered the love of research, the desire for new knowledge, the hope of unveiling some of the mysteries of Nature ; here in Japan there was time and opportunity, and soon papers of very real importance began to come home. With a group of his best pupils, among these was Professor Tanakate, a man of great ability, well known to many in Europe, he now represents Science in the Japanese House of Lords, Ewing took up those researches in Magnetism, which were soon to make his name famous—it will be convenient to treat of these together at a later stage.

To an engineer in Japan, the investigation of earthquakes was an obvious subject of research. In an article in Nature in June, 1884, he refers to the 300 he had experienced in five years, no one great shock, scores of successive movements of which no single one is prominently greater than the rest. A seismometer is of no value unless it exhibits continuously the displacement of a point during the whole disturbance, and in a paper communicated to the Royal Society by Sir William Thomson in June,1889, he described his new seismograph by which he obtained the first continuous record of earthquake motion. A very full account of his earth-

Mrs. Ewing died in 1909.

quake work is given in a paper published by the Tokyo University in 1883.*

The difficulty in earthquake measurement, he says, is to find a point which does not move during the disturbance, and he explains how this can be done by the use of a heavy bob mounted as a horizontal pendulum, while the motion of the point of suspension is recorded by means of a light lever mounted, so as to reduce the friction, on a plate which revolves about a vertical axis fixed to the earth. Professor Milne, whose seismograph is now in use in many observatories, was Ewing’s colleague in Japan.

The five years’ engagement came to an end in 1883. In that year, the Chair of Engineering in Dundee fell vacant and Ewing returned to Scotland as Professor in his native town, where he spent the next seven years in teaching and research, chiefly in connexion with magnetism. On his retirement from Tokyo, he was presented with personal gifts by the Mikado and later received the Japanese Order of the Precious Treasure.

In 1890 came a further change. Professor Stuart resigned the Cambridge Professorship of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics to which he had been appointed on the death of Professor Willis in 1875. The Professorship was “ to terminate with the tenure of the Professor first elected,” unless the University should determine otherwise. The last few years of Stuart’s tenure had been stormy ; difficulties had arisen as to the extent to which workshop practice should form part of the studies at an ancient University. One prominent member of the University expressed his opinion that “ Professor Stuart may be trusted to undertake no work in the Mechanical Workshops which would not enable him to teach and illustrate the subjects for the advancement of the knowledge and study of which in the University the professorship of Mechanism was founded.” Others took a different view. In the end, the Professorship was made perm anent; Ewing, acting, he tells us, on the advice of John Hopkinson, with whom he had become connected through his magnetic work, applied and was elected ; a syndicate which had been appointed to investigate, among other things, the whole question of the Workshops, was granted additional powers “ to enquire whether it be desirable to develop further the Engineering School in the University on the lines suggested,” in a Memorandum it had issued. As a result, in 1892, the Mechanical Sciences Tripos was established, the transformation of the Workshops into an Engineering Laboratory authorized, and a representative Committee with a Cambridge Executive set up to raise funds. O f that executive, Sir J . J . Thomson, Sir Napier Shaw, Professor Newall, and I are the sole remaining representatives.

* “ Memoirs of the Science Department, Tokio,” a .d . 1883, 2543 Japanese Era, Daigaku.

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Ewing established himself at once as a persona grata to the University, welcomed as a colleague—soon to become the leader—by those who had been active in the endeavours to secure for Engineering full recognition from the University.

Of his own views he made no secret. “ Following the example of Professor Stuart,” he said in his inaugural address on January 20, 1891, “ I would wish to regard this Chair as being in fact, though not strictly in name, a Chair of Engineering . . . I understand there has been some discussion as to the proper scope of such a Professorship, and it has been disputed whether a department of Engineering should find a place within the University ” ; and he proceeds to develop the reasons for treating Engineering as a suitable subject for study at Cambridge. As to the teaching, it was, in his opinion, to deal very much with principles, very little with detail, and then, after an account of what had been done abroad and in the new Universities in England, he claimed that “ an Engineering Laboratory endeavours, as all University laboratories, to contribute to the common stock of knowledge by furnishing opportunities and appliances for original research.”

To his wise judgment and sound advice we owe the general acceptance of the scheme of education proposed. The debt due to him may perhaps best be measured by the success of the scheme, which, aided by his staff, he developed during the next thirteen years. In Cambridge he will ever be remembered as the founder of the Engineering School, the man who taught the University what physical science, so long at home there, might do for Industry. As Professor Inglis has well said in his Notice in the Cambridge Review, “ The principles he laid down more than forty years ago have dictated the progress of Engineering Education in Cambridge ever since.”

The struggle had been no easy one. There were many who thought, for various reasons, financial among others, that it would be well for Cambridge to confine its energies to the promotion of the older studies, leaving those which had a direct bearing on Commerce and Industry to the new Universities then springing up in the main centres of industrial life. A reference to old fly-sheets and other documents shows how strong was this view, but after nearly fifty years few can doubt that the decision then taken was right and that it has been well that the University should prepare its sons to contribute its full share in the application of science and all else that Cambridge can give to the many needs of modern life. Such was Ewing’s own view. In a Centenary Address at Glasgow in 1924, he quotes with approval Lord Kelvin’s own words—“ There cannot be a greater mistake than looking superciliously on the practical applications of

Science, the life and soul of Science is its practical application.” While at the first graduation ceremony at which he presided at Edinburgh, after a reference to the seriousness of purpose given by the war to life, he asked, “ May we not look in the future work of the Universities for a more direct relationship to industrial requirements and economic problems Fas est ab hoste doceri ? ”

During his earlier years at Cambridge there was little time for original research, the laboratory absorbed his energy—the building was greatly increased in 1899, when a new wing was added in memory of John Hopkinson, the gift of his widow and surviving children—there was a lecture at the Royal Institution on Hysteresis ; at a rather earlier date he had dealt at an evening meeting with Earthquakes and how to measure them, but when he settled down he was able to attract students who cooperated with him in some fundamental researches into the crystalline structure of metals, among these Rosenhain was the most distinguished.

One other event deserves special notice. In 1891, the question of building an electric supply station at Cambridge was under discussion and the suggestion to equip it with a Parson’s Turbine, a novel and little-tried appliance, about which there was much scepticism, was made. Ewing was asked to report on the first condensing turbine, and after exhaustive trials at Newcastle came back to tell the Committee that the new machine was even then capable of rivalling the performance of any ordinary steam engine. In 1892, the turbine was installed at Cambridge ; it is now at the Science Museum.

From time to time further tests on turbines were made to try out the great inventor’s successive improvements, these culminated in the “ Turbinia,” and the amazement produced by her display at the Diamond Jubilee of 1897.

But a great change was coming. In 1902 there appeared over the signatures of Lord Selborne and Admiral Sir John Fisher the celebrated Memorandum which reformed naval education, a memorandum dealing with “ the training and employment of Officers and Men of the Royal Navy and Marines.” “ In the old days,” the Memorandum stated, “ it sufficed if a naval officer were a seaman, now he must be a seaman, a gunner, a soldier, an engineer, and a man of science as well.” The scheme involved a complete revolution in naval education, a revolution which no naval officer—not even Lord Fisher—could effect, without civilian help. Ewing was told that it was proposed to infuse some Engineering knowledge into the training of every naval officer and was asked to come to the Admiralty and advise on some points of detail, really, as he found shortly afterwards, to be looked at by the First Lord and the First Sea

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Lord. The view was eminently satisfactory, and in a few days a letter arrived from Lord Selborne offering him the post of Director of Naval Education, a new post created as an adjunct to the new scheme. Ewing accepted in 1903 and the next ten years were spent in developing the plan. Admiral Fisher, that “ volcanic personality ” he calls him in an Engineer’s Outlook, “ whom I was to see often in quiescence and in eruption, and to learn something of his greatness,” became his firm friend and together they carried the scheme, modified, no doubt, from time to time as growing experience prompted, to a successful issue.

As claimed by a recent writer in Nature, “ I t may, however, safely be said that naval education to-day owes more to the work done by Sir Alfred Ewing between 1903 and the war than to any other individual.”

In 1911, Ewing married as his second wife, Ellen Lina, the daughter of John Hopkinson ; in the same year he was awarded the K.G.B.

But education was not his only great work at the Admiralty. He had for some time, his son tells me, amused himself by solving the acrostics in the Observer and occasionally derived much pleasure in winning a small prize. In a casual talk with Admiral Oliver, Director of Naval Intelligence, he had revealed an interest in ciphers and their methods of construction.

At an early stage of the war* the wireless stations began to receive messages, and Ewing was asked to decipher them. This led to the organization of “ Room 40,” which, from a small beginning, increased in importance until eventually the staff grew to about 50 and as many as 2000 intercepted messages were dealt with in 24 hours.

The first ladies to join in the work, he tells us, “ were personal and family friends, whose intelligence I knew and on whose discretion I could count. They worked hard and had remarkable luck.” O f this, Mr. Churchillf tells the story. A German cruiser, the “ Magdeburg,” stranded in the Gulf of Finland was shelled by the Russians towards the end of August, 1914. The body of a drowned seaman clasping in his arms a book, which turned out to be the signal book of the Navy, was recovered ; shortly afterwards, the book was sent to London and put at the disposal of Room 40. The work continued until the end of the war, helped by the assumed stupidity of the British and the loquacity of the Zeppelin and submarine commanders recording their successes on their way home. Many important political messages also were picked up and deciphered ; of these, perhaps, the most striking was the Zimmerman message, which had a profound effect on American opinion, thus described by Mr.

* For much of what follows I am indebted to Times of January 8, 1935. f Churchill. “ The World Crisis,” 1911-14, p. 463.



W. Page,* the American Ambassador to England. “ On January 16, 1917, the ever-watchful ears of the British Wireless Operators detected the characteristic spluttering which informed them that another German message was speeding through the air. When decoded the British found that they possessed this somewhat disjointed but still extremely valuable document,” and there was published on March 1 a “ telegram from Dr. Zimmerman, German Foreign Secretary to the German Minister in Mexico, outlining a scheme for an alliance of Germany, Japan, and Mexico against the British State and for the cession in case of victory, of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico . . . Information entrusted to the air was easily obtained and as easily deciphered.”

The importance of this work was fully realized at the time by those in charge at the Admiralty and in the Fleet.

There were many letters from Lord Fisher; “ What you do, do it with all your might,” he wrote with reference to his own frivolous occupation during a brief holiday at a pleasure resort. “ We owe you tons of gratitude.” While Lord Jellicoef concluded a farewell letter on Ewing’s retirement in 1917 with the words “ The value of your work cannot be estimated in battleships or any other kind of vessel. Until the blank curtain descended we hardly realized how very much it meant.” Lord Fisher’s precept applies to every act of Ewing’s life and is the secret of much of his success.

At a rather later date Lord FisherJ refers to the elucidation of the cipher messages “ as one of the crowning glories of the Admiralty work in the late war. In my time they never failed in that elucidation. Yes, Wireless is the weapon of the strong.”

Public reference to the work and its importance was first made by Lord Balfour, who as First Lord well knew its value, in a speech at Edinburgh in 1925. “ To Room 40,” he said, “ where Sir Alfred was the leadingspirit, the country owed an immense debt of gratitude.” While, in an interesting article, a German§ paper in 1932 assigns many of their losses to the manner in which, from the very beginning of the war, Sir Alfred, in Room 40, realized the importance of his task of deciphering the wireless messages.

In sending recently to Lady Ewing a letter of condolence on her husband’s death, Sir Oswyn Murray, the Secretary of the Admiralty, wrote, 11 “ Their Lordships recall with high appreciation the eminent services which Sir Alfred rendered to the Admiralty while holding the

* “ Life and Letters of Walter Page,” vol. I ll , p. 323.f I am indebted to Lord Jellicoe’s kindness for permission to quote this.+ “ Memories,95 p. 109.§ “ Bremer Nachrichten,” March 13, 1932.|| I have to thank Sir Oswyn for permission to quote this letter.

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appointment of Director of Naval Education from 1903 until his retirement in 1916, both in the discharge of the important duties of that post and in the performance of the special work of national importance which he undertook during the Great War.”

In 1916 the dual office of Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh fell vacant and was offered to Ewing. On the advice of Lord Balfour, who was both First Lord and also Chancellor, he accepted it after some hesitation. The arrangement was that for a time he should continue the direction of Room 40. He soon found that this involved too great a strain and in May, 1917, handed over the control to Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence, and devoted himself entirely to Edinburgh.* He realized that the war had brought new problems in education and industry and that the great universities would have to play a very important part in the necessary solving of these problems. Rapid developments in specialized study made it essential to found new chairs and lectureships, and during the term of his office at Edinburgh— 1916-29—no fewer than thirteen new chairs were established, six in the Faculty of Arts, four in the Faculty of Medicine, and three in the Faculty of Science—besides a number of lectureships in new subjects or in some of the older subjects, where the teaching needed extension. A new degree in commerce was established; and the degree of Ph.D. was instituted in the hope of encouraging postgraduate work and research. The increase in the number of the teaching staff involved as a corollary an extensive scheme of new buildings. It was impossible to find a site for the necessary new buildings in the immediate vicinity of the old College, and Ewing decided to recommend the purchase of a large area of ground about a mile and a half south of the old College. This proposal was unanimously approved by the Court and the Senate, and on this site, during his principalship, independent blocks were erected for Chemistry, Zoology, and Animal Genetics, while plans were prepared and finances provided for new blocks for Geology and Engineering, built, however, after he had retired. These blocks of buildings, known as King’s Buildings, will remain as a permanent memorial to Ewing’s term of office as Principal of the University of Edinburgh.

There was much else besides ; the old medical buildings were reconstructed at a cost of nearly £100,000, while, by the generosity of Mr. Cowan, a Hostel accommodating over 100 men students was provided ; this he opened shortly after his retirement.

* In ‘ Nature,5 of January, 26, 1935, Sir T. Hudson Beare has given a very full and interesting account of Ewing’s life and work. I am indebted to his kindness and to the Editor of ‘ Nature 5 for permission to quote from this.



New ordinances for all the Science subjects provided in each case for an Ordinary and an Honours Degree and to quote again from Sir Thomas Hudson Beare, “ My summary of Ewing’s activities would be that, when he came to Edinburgh, the Faculty of Science was not either in strength of Staff, equipment or buildings, in the least worthy of a great University like Edinburgh, and when he left the University it had been equipped for the sphere of its work in a measure which is not surpassed in my view by any other University in the Kingdom.”

This was not done without cost ; in a Memorandum on Finance, prepared at the time of his resignation, he shows that the income of the University had increased from £110,000 in 1913-14, to very nearly £250,000 in 1927-28, while during his tenure of office, bequests, gifts from private persons and public bodies, grants from Trusts and other sources for Capital purposes amounted to £1,174,695 ; much of this would have come to the University independently of any effort of his, but a very large part, e.g., gifts of £100,000 from Sir Alexander Grant, and £60,000 from Mr. Thomas Cowan, were due to his personal efforts.

All this work was no slight strain, both on Lady Ewing and himself, for, in addition to it, many other duties of a public and social kind fell on the Principal and his wife, and so in 1929, “ when small ailments began to sound a warning note,” I did well, he says, to retire, leaving Edinburgh with much regret and with a host of friends, but with the feeling that it was time to rest awhile. They returned to Cambridge, “ a delectable town,” to be received with pleasure by College friends and others and to enjoy six years of a still most useful though less strenuous life. He was made an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, of which, while Professor at Cambridge, he had been a Fellow.

But it is time to give some account of his scientific investigations and books, and of the man himself. So far the story has been that of an active and energetic organizer, gifted with a persuasive tongue, with tact and humour, applying patiently and perseveringly his scientific training and knowledge to problems of education and administration. Besides this, he carried out original investigations of no small importance. His own view was that these results were due to his good fortune rather than to merit. If he had any particular faculty he said it had been that of grasping at the skirts of happy chance when they presented themselves. “ They* seemed to present themselves oftener when I was a young man than they do to young men now, but I dare say happy chance wears her skirts, like other women, shorter now.”

* Reply on receiving the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, 1929.

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One who knew him intimately writes, “ Whatever gifts he had or had not for scientific work, he possessed in a marked degree that inconspicuous but none the less valuable and rare faculty for seeing, taking, and holding opportunities which come and which go if they are not grasped quickly. This was a characteristic which marked all his walks in life and which may be less recognized than other of his talents, such as that of clear exposition.”

The history of the discovery of Hysteresis, the rediscovery he would in fairness call it, illustrates this faculty in a marked degree. He was a young man in a far country, he had the urge for research, time and opportunity were there, the problem must not be too difficult, the apparatus simple.

His earliest* paper from Tokyo dealt with some mechanical changes observed to take place with lapse of time when a wire is stretched by running water in and out of a tank hanging from the wire. Sir Wm. Thomson, twenty-five years earlier, had noted that under these conditions there were also changes in the thermo-electric properties of the wire, and these Ewing set out to investigate further. He found, in a second paper,f an unexpected result. “ When after a w irehad once been stretched, any given load was gradually applied and removed successively within the new elastic limit, the thermo-electric effects for equal amounts of stress during loading and unloading were widely different, but passed through a cyclic series of values for each repetition of the cyclic changes of stress . . .”

“ The curves got by putting on load (not exceeding the elastic limit) and by taking it off are far from coincident, but form a closed figure containing a wide area.” And again, “ It is suggested that the cyclic phenomenon, so conspicuous in this investigation, is not peculiar to the thermo-electric effects of stress and may, perhaps, be found to occur in the changes of any quality of matter which is a function of another variable quality (such as temperature) when the latter quality is subjected to increment and decrement,” and he announced his intention of extending the inquiry to other metals and other modes of stress.

In another paper, J the effect of twisting a wire under magnetization is discussed and the results illustrated by a series of curves which exhibit in a striking manner a persistence of the previous state such as might be caused by molecular friction. “ To this action, which is like that formerly described by the author as a characteristic of the curves connecting

* 4 Proc. Roy. Soc.,5 vol. 30, p. 510 (1880).t “ Effects of Stress on the Thermo-electric Quality of Metals.” 4 Proc. Roy. Soc.,5 vol. 32.

p. 399 (1881).t “ On the Production of Transient Electric Currents in Iron and Steel Conductors by Twisting

them when Magnetized or by Magnetizing them when Twisted.” 4 Proc. Roy. Soc.,5 vol. 33, p . 21 (1881). A fuller version of the paper, of which the above is an abstract, appeared in 4 Proc. Roy. Soc.,5 vol. 36, p. 36 (1882), after the author had returned to Dundee.

thermo-electric quality with longitudinal pull . . . The author now gives the name of Hysteresis, Y grepncnsfrom Y^repew, to be behind.”

In a third paper on the same subject,* after a reference to the name Hysteresis which he had given to the new effect, he states that it may occur in the changes of magnetization of iron produced by (1) change of the magnetic field ; (2) change of stress ; (3) change of temperature. The paper gives an account of his experiments, and points out that if curves are drawn, giving the relation of I, the intensity of magnetization, to H, the magnetizing force, the curves form loops whose area measures the work done per unit of volume in performing the cycle.

For a full account of all this work, reference should be made to Ewing’ sf paper in the Philosophical Transactions, and to his own bookj on the subject. This is not the place to attempt to trace the consequences ; as every electrician knows, they have been immense. The paper contains his final definition of Hysteresis, and this deserves a place in the account of his work.

“ When there are two qualities, M and N, such that cyclic variations of N cause cyclic variations of M, then if the changes of M lag behind those of N, we may say that there is Hysteresis in the relation of M to N.”

While all credit is due to him for his discovery, made in Japan, aided, as he says in one of his papers, by his band of students, it was in great measure a rediscovery, for he had been forestalled, at any rate in part. German physicists had realized the importance in many branches of Physics of “ Elastische Nachwirkung,” as it was called. The name is due to Kohlrausch, who first used it in 1866, pointing out that it included two kinds of action ; in one of these, the effect of a force on a body depends on the previous conditions. This was discussed by Fromme in the fourth volume of Wiedemanns Annalen (1878), while in the sixth volume of the same, Professor Cohn described the effects of stress on the thermo-electric quality of a metal.

Earlier still (1873) Stoletow and, about the same date, Rowland measured carefully the relation between magnetization and the magnetizing force, but in neither case did they carry the iron through a series of cyclic changes.

This was done by Warburg,§ who in 1880 had published an account of the experiments in which he showed by the magnetometric method that if an iron wire be subjected to a magnetizing force which increases to a

* “ On Effects of Retentiveness in the Magnetisation of Iron and Steel.” ‘ Proc. Roy. Soc./ vol. 34, p. 39 (1882).

t “ Experimental Researches in Magnetism.” ‘ Phil. Trans.,’ vol. 176, Part II, p. 523 (1885).X “ Magnetic Induction in Iron and other Metals.’’§ ‘ Freiburger Berichte,’ vol. 8, December, 1880; ‘ Wiedemanns Annalen,’ vol. 13(1881).



maximum and then decreases to its initial value, the magnetic moment of the wire will be found to be greater when the force is increasing than it is

when the force is decreasing, while further, the integral — J mdYi measures

the work done on the cycle.Warburg learned of Ewing’s work from the publication of his paper on

the retentiveness of iron and steel, and a letter describing his own experiments was sent to the Philosophical Magazine in February, 1883. Ewing replied from Tokyo in May, 1883, regretting that he was unaware of Warburg’s work, referring* also to the fact that Cohn had forestalled him in the observations on thermometric effects and, in his later papers, fully acknowledged Warburg’s claim.

In his original paper, Warburg states that he has searched without result to find if the effects had been previously observed, though “ I can hardly assume that they are unknown to those who have studied the relationship between magnetic moment and magnetizing force.”

Among a number of further papers and lectures on magnetism, it is perhaps only necessary to refer to those dealing with one aspect of the matter. From the first, Ewing tried to connect the effects he had observed with Weber’s theory of magnetic molecules, arranged originally without any order, but gradually brought to an ordered position by the magnetizing force, and in 1890 he delighted various audiences by a series of experiments in which a number of small compass needles arranged on a board were subject to magnetizing force, and by their behaviour illustrated very fully Weber’s theory. This theory he endeavoured to amend in papersf some thirty years later in which he transferred the magnetic properties from the molecule to the atom.

But magnetism was not the only subject greatly indebted to his researches. In 1898-99, Rosenhain, working in his laboratory as an 1851 Exhibition Research Scholar, was examining the behaviour of iron strained beyond the elastic limit. Under vertical illumination in the microscope as the limit was passed, a change was observed in the appearance of the polished and etched surface. $ “ A number of sharp black linesappear on the faces of the crystalline grains, at first on a few grains only . . . . On each grain they are more or less parallel, but their direction differs on different grains.”

* This he had already done in the paper referred to by Warburg.t “ Contributions to the Molecular Theory of Induced Magnetism.” ‘ Proc. Roy. Soc.,’

vol. 48, p. 342 (1890).X “ Experiments on Micro-Metallurgy Effects of Strain.” ‘ Proc. Roy. Soc.,’ vol. 65, p. 85

(1899); “ On the Crystalline Structure of Metals.” Bakerian Lecture. ‘ Phil. Trans.,’ A vol. 193, p. 353 (1899).


The discovery puzzled both teacher and student and they parted for the n ig h t; next morning each had reached the same conclusion. When the metal is strained, the yielding takes place by finite amounts of slips occurring at a limited number of places; short portions of inclined surfaces are exposed, which, being inclined, return no light to the microscope and appear as dark bands—slip bands the authors named them. Further experiments confirmed this explanation, and since that date slip bands have added much to the literature dealing with the deformation of crystals. The discovery was fundamental.

His book, Magnetic Induction in Ir, has already been mentioned. In 1920, a volume, Thermodynamics for Engineers, was published, and two years later he contributed to the Dictionary o f Applied , aseries of very valuable articles on Thermodynamics, Refrigeration, and some allied subjects. Questions dealing with the relation of Heat and other forms of Energy had always interested him ; as far back as 1897 he described, with Dunkerly, to the British Association then meeting at York a series of observations on the specific heat of superheated steam, while as recently as October, 1934, he took a prominent part, in connexion with discussions during the International Conference on Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, in guiding the decisions of a committee which was dealing with the symbols and nomenclature of certain branches of Thermodynamics. The symbol for Entropy which, except among British physicists, is most commonly employed is S, while H is very generally used to represent Heat Content. Ewing persuaded the meeting to adopt <f> and I as alternative to these. He was at the time engaged in revising the book on Thermodynamics, and it was a source of real pleasure to him a few weeks later when, at his request, Mr. Egerton very kindly undertook to complete the task. At the same meeting he pleaded successfully for the use of the Centigrade scale only in Thermodynamical formulae.

To the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research he gave much time and thought. He served for the usual period 1929-32 on the Advisory Council; but it was probably as Chairman of some important Committees that his services were of the greatest value. O f these, perhaps the most important was the Bridge Stress Committee, 1923-28. Prior to the formation of the Committee, bridge designers had been to some extent in the dark as to the proper allowances to be made for strengthening bridges sufficiently against the so-called impact effects liable to take place when a train moves across at high speed ; but as a result of tests on over fifty bridges, with some forty different types of locomotives, the Committee were able to recommend practical formulae for the use of bridge

designers and to make suggestions leading to practicable modifications in locomotive design.

At an earlier date, while still a Professor at Dundee, he had been interested in cognate questions and had experimented with his seismograph on the vibration of the Tay Bridge. He was an excellent Chairman of a Committee. Professor Inglis, who took no small part in the development of the formulae just mentioned, writes in the Cambridge Review, “ I can testify to his efficiency as a Chairman.”—So, indeed,

can anyone who, like myself, has sat under him—“ To work under Ewing was no sinecure ; under a genial manner there was an infinity of driving force. He never spared himself and had no use for members of a team who did not pull their w eight. . . He would set one tasks to carry out before the next meeting and if these tasks were not performed, his displeasure, though politely expressed, was entirely obvious. On the other hand, he was most generous in bestowing praise where praise was justified.”

He was also Chairman of a Committee to enquire into the provision of a Locomotive Experimental Station, and of another on the Mechanical Testing of Timber. Professor C. F. Jenkin, in 1920, in his Report on Materials o f Construction used in Aircr, had included a chapter on testing of timber. In 1928, he expressed to the Department his view that some of the methods used in practice were open to criticism, and a Committee was set up with Ewing as Chairman. Owing to ill-health, Jenkin had to resign in 1933. The Report* was issued in July, 1934, less than six months before the Chairman’s death. I t gives a summary of methods and conclusions and recommends the re-issue of Jenkin’s chapter brought up to date as the most effective way of placing the particulars of the investigation before the technical public.

Other Boards on which Ewing served dealt with Building Research, Fuel Research, and Food Investigation. He was Chairman of the Engineering Committee of the last. The work dealt with a number of questions concerning heating, ventilation, refrigeration, etc., and much of the experimental work was carried out at the National Physical Laboratory. His general practice before any Committee was to ask the Assistant in Charge to meet him, sometimes in town ; quite often he would go down to the Laboratory, and discuss in detail the progress of the work since the previous meeting and the steps to be taken in the future. In this way, he came to the meeting with full knowledge ; he could explain in his own clear manner what had been done and why, criticize it when necessary,

* Effect is being given to this recommendation. Professor Robertson has undertaken the revision.


and reply to the questions and criticisms of the Committee ; with him in the Chair there was always progress. To the National Physical Laboratory he was,ever a friend ; as mentioned above, he was on the Council of the Royal Society at the time of its foundation and a member of the Committee which drafted the scheme under which the Laboratory worked until 1919. He served for several periods on the General Board, and was an active member of the Executive Committee until within a few months of his death ; interested and helpful in many ways, specially perhaps in the engineering researches of Stanton and Gough, and in the investigation of the Metallurgy Department over which Rosenhain, his partner in the slip band enquiry, presided so efficiently.

He was a valued member of all the engineering societies, and to each he gave of his best. To the Civil Engineers he delivered two James Forrest Lectures, the first in 1899 on Magnetism, the second at the Centenary Celebrations of the Institution in 1928, entitled a “ Century of Invention.” In the first, starting with Hoang Ti, who some twenty-four centuries before the Christian era is said to have piloted his junks by the aid of a piece of loadstone floated on water, he traces the story of magnetic discovery through Marco Polo and Perigrinus to Faraday, his own discoveries and his model of Weber’s magnetic molecules.

The second James Forrest Lecture, after an account of some of the main discoveries of the century, concludes on a theme which, in his last years, greatly occupied his thoughts.

Do people know, he asks, “ how near in the past war, the world came to destruction through misapplying the endowment which it owes to the Engineer... ? Surely it is for the Engineer as much as any man to pray for a spiritual awakening to strive after such a growth of sanity as will prevent the gross misuse of his good gifts. For it is the Engineer who, in the course of his labours to promote the comfort and convenience of man, has put into man’s unchecked and careless hand a monstrous potentiality of ruin.”

In 1910 he delivered the second Kelvin Lecture to the Institution of Electrical Engineers on the “ Work of Lord Kelvin in Telegraphy and Navigation.”

Sir William Thomson had been his master and teacher when a student at Edinburgh. It was his work which Ewing set out to extend in his early days in Japan, and which led him to the discovery of Hysteresis.

More than forty years earlier he had by accident come across in Good Words an article on “ Energy,” by Thomson and Tait, explaining in a simple way the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, its capacity for dissipation and its transformations. “ The ideas were new then (1865), and to me they came with the force of a revelation.” The lecture from


one who had participated in three cable-laying expeditions gives a vivid account of Kelvin’s work, specially his work for seamen.

Of the British Association, he became a life member in 1876 ; his presence nine years previously at the age of 12 has already been noted.

He served on many Committees ; in 1906, as President of Section G at York, he devoted his address to considering in certain aspects the inner structure of metals and the manner in which they yield under strain, a question lying on his favourite borderline between engineering and physics. There is much reference to his joint work with Rosenhain ; attempts “ to penetrate into the very heart and substance of a metal in order better to comprehend the qualities on which the practical work of Engineering relies.”

Twenty-five years later (1931), he was again President of Section G, and gave a lecture for which many years previously Sir Frederick Bram- well had made provision. It was to deal with the whole question of prime movers in 1931 and to be given at the Centenary Meeting.

Sir Frederick in 1888, referring to a prediction he had made at the fiftieth meeting of the Association (York, 1881), repeated it, stating that he believed then, unless there were some great improvement, the days of steam movers for small powers were numbered, and those who attended the Centenary Meeting in 1931 would see the present steam engines in museums. This was to be the text on which the lecture was built. In it the author describes the progress of the internal combustion engine, contrasting it with modern steam plant and in particular the turbine, unborn in 1881 but very vigorous fifty years later.

In the following year the Association commenced its second century of work again at York. Ewing was its President and gave his Address on “ An Engineer’s Outlook,” and the position as he saw it then.

A resume of the more important scientific work during recent years leads in the end to the theme discussed in his James Forrest Lecture four years previously. There is a sinister side even to the peaceful activities of the Engineer, whose business it is to adapt the resources of Nature to the use and convenience of Man. “ How is Man to spend the leisure he has won by handing over nearly all his burden to an untiring mechanical slave ? Dare he hope for such spiritual betterment as will qualify him to use it well? God grant that he may strive for that and attain it. I t is only by seeking he will find.”

But to turn now to some more personal characteristics. At home, he found his chief relaxation in walking ; his holidays he frequently spent abroad, mostly in Switzerland ; he was a regular visitor to the Riffel Alp, in later years to Miirren and Grindelwald. Writing from Zurich in 1909,



he says, “ I am in pretty good walking form ; it is when I try to climb rocks that, like the sailor in the story, I feel all of a-tremble ; ” on glaciers or the mountain path he never seemed to tire. I was with him, with some members of my family in that year, and one of them will ever remember the pace at which he brought the party back from the M atterhorn Hut above the Hornli across the Gorner Glacier and up to the Riffel Alp, and the verses produced at breakfast the next morning with which, during the watches of the night, he had commemorated the occasion. He was fond of children and a great favourite ; they were a frequent subject for his camera, in the use of which he was adept.

Astronomy, particularly some of its modern developments, interested him greatly ; on the roof of his house in Moray Place, Edinburgh, he had a telescope. He gave much time and care to social duties which he took on as a part of his work, whether as a Professor at Cambridge, at Greenwich, or as Principal at Edinburgh. Students were ever welcome to his hom e; he was an excellent host and very popular. One who was a student at Edinburgh writes, “ He was loved by thousands who never came into closer contact with him than at some large gathering, but who delighted to see him in the old Quad reading the notices and making friends with any undergraduate.” Three cheers for “ Alfy ” were given lustily when called for at a students’ meeting at which he was present.

Much more might be written about the man himself. His book contains many “ odds and ends ” of interest; for example, his notices of some of the distinguished men he knew well, Kelvin, Parsons, and Lord Balfour. A paper on the Fleeming Jenkins and Stevenson is a beautiful tribute to friends to whom he owed much. Louis Stevenson was a student at Edinburgh about the same time as Ewing. They met at the Jenkin’s house and became firm friends. Let me quote from two letters to Tokyo. Ewing had been promised a letter from Mrs. Jenkin which did not come and in one of his letters to the Professor asked for a “ note ” not so dreadful as a letter ; then came the reply, “ A note, of course, my dear Mr. Ewing, I can write you a note, one note, twenty, if you would care to read them.” It was the first of many. The other was from Jenkin himself. Ewing was in trouble ; his wife had been ill, he was uncertain as to his future and his work. “ I feel a call to preach. ‘ Permanent set towards anxiety.’ . . . But just give it up resolutely. c The coward dies a thousand deaths ’ is applicable to every kind of misfortune, as well as to death. And the Christian ‘ take no thoughts for the morrow ’ applies particularly and specially to this kind of thing.”

Or again, there are some of his addresses when conferring Honorary Degrees. Mr. Lloyd George he contrasts with an earlier David. The

Sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him, but he succeeded at last in securing unity of military control. He was, perhaps, fortunate in having no newspaper press.” While Sir Douglas Haig, so numerous were the offers of Freedom from great cities, he thought might be tempted to exclaim, “ If this be Freedom, give me again the servitude of high command.”

And he deals with more serious matter in his Hibbert Lecture (February, 1933) on Science and Modern Problems. In previous addresses he had treated of the greatness of the achievements of science. Here heconsiders some of the difficulties that success has raised. The influence of

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the machine in producing unemployment is a world problem. The advantage of each is attained by studying to promote the benefit of all. The world as a whole must find salvation if any of the nations is to be secure. And again. The Christian gospel of good will—to which the world is so slow to listen—is an individual message. Thou shalt love thy neighbour is more than a general injunction.

And his Lay Sermon preached before the University in St. Giles’s, June 1, 1930, gives his answer to some of his difficulties.

“ To-day the world is weary and heavy laden. I t is conscious of problems which seem insoluble and burdens which threaten to become greater than can be borne. The problems would be made easy and the burdens light could but men and nations learn to rule themselves in the spirit of the teaching of Christ.”

In his will he left to the College of which he had been Fellow and Honorary Fellow a sum of money to be used for the purposes of the Chapel.

Sir Alfred died on January 17, 1935. He left a son, Dr. Alfred Ewing, and a daughter, the wife of Professor Wills, of Birmingham, children of his first marriage. Lady Ewing and their son, the grandson of Dr. John Hopkinson, also survive him.


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