Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 Excerpt:... Science was fresh from the printing press to our hands. His own presence as a teacher emphasized and illustrated the principles of these philosophies, so that they have remained with us and have ever formed a part of our substantial thinking. To say that Jackson and Gillespie were mathematical geniuses is but partial recognition of their merit. The one was thoroughly practical. By the originality of his thoughts, illustrations, and interesting methods, Gillespie won some of us to his recitations--not because his subjects were within our required course, but simply on account of the inspiration which he infused in us; while to those to whom these subjects were primary in importance, he was an object of intellectual worship. (Tillespie was as thorough in his teaching and class discipline as in his theoretical thinking. To Dr. Jackson the knowledge of the principles of mathematics and their application to light, heat, and physics generally, was intuitive. His mathematical conceptions were as clear, as cloudless and rapid as the light to which he applied them. His thinking was done, not at his desk, but in the College garden, cultivating his beautiful flowers. He was at home without a text-book. The rapidity with which he would construct and illustrate, in class, mathematical figures, with his ready pencils, could he easily followed by but one man in our class--AVestfall. When this wonderful man found time to write out his ideas in those models of text-books--his Conic Sections, Optics, and other works, we, who saw him a walking compendium, an enthusiastic cultivator and admirer of Dr. Pearson's flowers, conld never divine. But the works were, nevertheless, written in such a lucid and orderly manner as to be unequaled by those of any other author on the same s...