Tait, PETER GUTHRIE

Tait, PETER GUTHRIE, natural philosopher and mathematician, was born at Dalkeith, April 28, 1831. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and, after a year's study in Edinburgh University under Professors Kelland and Forbes, proceeded to St Peter's College, Cambridge. He was senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman of 1852. In 1854 he was elected professor of Mathematics in Queen's College, Belfast, and in 1860 professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University. While in Belfast he assisted Dr Andrews in experimental researches into the nature of ozone. Subsequently he was associated with Balfour Stewart in experiments on the heating of a disc rotating in vacuo. His most important experimental work has been on thermo-electricity, on the pressure errors of the Challenger thermometers, on the effect of pressure on the maximum density point of water, on thermal conductivity, and on impact. To mathematical physics he has contributed several valuable memoirs, of which those on Mirage and on the Kinetic Theory of Gases and those involving quaternionic treatment call for special mention. These are all published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which Tait has been general secretary since 1879. In pure mathematics his papers on Knots and on Quaternions are best known. He is recognised as the successor to Hamilton in the development of the calculus of Quaternions (q.v.), his Elementary Treatise (3d ed. 1890) being still the best working book for the student. The Dynamics of a Particle, by Tait and Steele, originally published in 1856 (6th ed. 1889), still holds its place as a text-book in Cambridge and elsewhere. In conjunction with Sir W. Thomson (q.v.; in 1891 made Lord Kelvin) Tait wrote the well-known Treatise on Natural Philosophy (vol. i. 1867; new ed. in two parts, 1879). The Unseen Universe, by Stewart and Tait (17th ed. 1890), and Paradoxical Philosophy (1878), a sequel to the former, have an interest for other besides scientific minds. Tait also took an important part in the preparation of the biographies of Principal Forbes, Professor Rankine, and Professor Andrews. Of his other writings we may mention Lectures on some Recent Advances in Physical Science (3d ed. 1885) and his text-books on Light (2d ed. 1889), Heat (2d ed. 1891), and Properties of Matter (2d ed. 1890); and two volumes of his Scientific Papers were published in 1898 and 1900. A tractate upon Newton and the Laws of Motion appeared in 1899. Various prizes and medals of the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London have been awarded to him. His health failing, Professor Tait resigned his professorship in the spring of 1901.—His son, Lieutenant FRED G. TAIT (1870-1900), the famous golfer, was shot in a reconnaissance near Koodoosberg in South Africa.