BRAGG CENTENARY

Introduction

Two of the more important figures in 20th century science have been William Henry Bragg (1) and his elder son William Lawrence Bragg (2). Less fully studied and understood are the formative years of W.H. Bragg’s academic and research career, which were spent in Australia, where, in addition, W.L. Bragg was born, raised and educated. W.H. Bragg was appointed Elder Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Physics in the University of Adelaide late in 1885; at the age of 23 years and very soon after he graduated from the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. It may be conceded that such a young man needed time to mature and to learn the ways of the academic world, but nevertheless it seems curious that his first 17 years in Australia should have involved little more than wide social popularity, a passion for golf and painting in water-colours, ‘bicycle tours and picnics during the long lazy summer vacations by the sea’ , a flirtation with X-rays, and generally ‘a pleasant and useful life as a popular teacher and good friend in the Adelaide community (3).

In her illuminating and charming portrait of her father, Bragg’s only daughter, Mrs. G.M. Caroe, notes three unusual features of her father’s life and career, two in the form of questions: ‘Why did he come to research so late?’; the uniqueness of father and son sharing work which brought them a joint Nobel Prize; and ‘How did a man so retiring, so completely without personal ambition, become such a public figure?’(4).

Previous assessments of the early Adelaide years invite re-examination, and are shown in the present essay to be inadequate; the notable features enumerated by Mrs. Caroe deserve further exploration. In addition, the study of Australian science, then largely confined to the three universities at Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, offers additional perspectives on Australian history, on scientific life at the periphery of the English colonial empire, and on the world-wide impact of Cambridge science. The events surrounding both Horace Lamb’s tenure of, and resignation from the Adelaide Mathematics Professorship and W.H. Bragg’s succession to the augmented chair, as well as Bragg’s exceedingly strenuous first,two years there, all illuminate these themes.

Adelaide University

The colony of South Australia was founded late in 1836, when the first boat-loads of new settlers arrived from England — religious and political dissenters who sought escape from the established religion and class structure of their homeland. It was an agricultural economy from the beginning, but in the 1840s copper was discovered north of Adelaide, and mine owners joined the pastoralists, politicians and businessmen in Adelaide’s newly emerging gentry and ruling classes. By the 1870s the transcontinental telegraph line had connected the eastern capitals of Australia, through Adelaide, with Darwin and Europe; Adelaide had 30,000 inhabitants, piped water and gas lighting, and attractive public buildings built from the warm local stone (5).

The University of Adelaide was founded in unusual circumstances. In February 1872 the Baptist, Congregational and Presbyterian Churches decided to establish Union College, primarily to train young men for the Christian ministry. The College soon found it necessary to seek funds to expand its facilities and activities, and the copper magnate Walter Watson Hughes agreed to give £20,000. This princely contribution caused the officers of the College to rethink their plans. In what has been described as ‘a splendid act of self-abnegation’ they decided to offer the funds for the establishment of a university. The province was less than forty years old; it was imaginative as well as disinterested to think in terms of a university for Adelaide (6). Meetings, discussions and negotiations went ahead under a University Association, and after a lengthy parliamentary debate the required legislation received the Governor’s assent on 6 November 1874. On the same day the pastoralist Thomas Elder gave a further £20,000. Hughes’s deed of gift specified that his money was to be used to endow two professorships, one in classics and comparative philology and literature, the other in English language and literature, and mental and mral philosophy. The new Council decided to use Elder’s gift to appoint two further professors, in pure and applied mathematics and in natural science, the latter including geology and chemistry.

Like the existing universities in Sydney and Melbourne, Adelaide was anxious to recruit the best possible people to its foundation chairs, which characteristically required a broad range of scholarship. It was March 1876 before teaching could begin.

Horace Lamb

The foundation Professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics was Horace Lamb, Second Wrangler in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos of 1872 and Fellow and Lecturer in Mathematics of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lamb had married in 1875 and had therefore been required to resign his college fellowship (7). One of his earlier schoolmasters, by then a clergyman in South Australia, persuaded him to apply for the Adelaide post, to which he was duly appointed. Nothing could be taken for granted in setting up a new institution so far from ‘ham’ (8); on 20 March 1876 Lamb wrote to the Registrar of the University to report that ‘there will be little choice in the matter of chalk as Williams [a local stationer] has no such thing in his shops’ (9).

Lamb’s formal responsibilities were confined to pure and applied mathematics, but from the beginning and purely of his own volition he instituted and gave courses in natural philosophy at all three levels of the B.A. and B.Sc. degrees (10). Furthermore, in so far as the limitations of apparatus and space would allow, Lamb also held regular laboratory classes for the natural philosophy students.

Initially conditions were difficult, as the embryonic university moved from one set of inadequate, rented quarters to another. In September of his second year Lamb wrote to George Stokes, offering himself (unsuccessfully) for the Sydney mathematics chair, Stokes being on the selection committee (11). Furthermore, when the University reviewed the duties and salaries of its professors early in 1879, the Vice-Chancellor reported to the University Council that ‘Professor Lamb agreed with the proposal made to him with this exception -that he should not be required to accept the title and duties of Professor of Natural Philosophy in addition to that of Professor of Mathematics if his salary was to be the same as those of Professors Tate and Kelly, as his work would then be much increased’ (12).

Despite these difficulties, however, Lamb became a beloved teacher, popular public lecturer and respected member of Adelaide society (13); he carried a large teaching and examining load, saw six of his children born there, and wrote and published the first edition of his famous hydrodynamics text (14).

In December 1883 Lamb wrote to the Registrar as follows (15):

‘Sir,

I wish respectfully to ask the Council whether they would be disposed to grant me a year’s leave of absence at the end of the next academical year [late 1884]. I shall then have been nine years in the service of the University, during which time I have undertaken duties which do not fall strictly within the scope of my professorship. I think I may fairly urge in support of my request that the change would give me opportunities, of rendering myself more capable of discharging these as well as my other duties with efficiency and advantage to the University.

I am . . . ..’

This may now sound a rather straightforward request, but it contained the seeds of a long and sometimes distressing debate. First, there were no formal provisions for leave of absence. Second, Lamb was very reluctant personally to arrange for his teaching to be continued during his absence, despite two requests from the Council to do so (16). Third, the Council did not acknowledge the relevance of Lamb’s other ‘duties’ (his physics teaching) to his application (17), although they did discuss the question with him as a separate matter; and finally they appear to have had a suspicion that the reasons for the request were? altogether or ... mainly of a personal and private character’ (18).

Correspondence travelled back and forth between Lamb and the Council, but by January 1885 still no decision had been made. In February Lamb wrote a long letter to the Registrar regarding his physics teaching, at the end of which he begged leave ‘to suggest that the Council should formally establish a separate Lectureship on Experimental Physics’. As I have no wish to create any unnecessary difficulties’, he continued, ‘I am willing ... to accept this for the present, as an honorary appointment, from year to year’ (19). The Council agreed, and finally also acceded to Lamb’s request for leave of absence, although by the time of his departure in mid-1885 there was little doubt as to his underlying motive. With the aid of his old Trinity College colleague, Henry Taylor, Lamb had earlier applied for the chair of pure mathematics at Owens College, Manchester, the Council of which, on 19 June, has resolved to elect him ‘subject to the receipt of satisfactory testimonials from Adelaide and to the result of an interview to be held with him on his return from Adelaide’ (20).

Despite their protracted nature, these difficult negotiations left no permanent scars and Lamb and the University parted amicably (21). Indeed, Lamb subsequently acted for the University in the United Kingdom on numerous occasions, notably in the selection of his successor and as the University Library’s buying agent for many years (22).

As far as the University Council was concerned the principal impediment to granting Lamb’s request was the difficulty of providing for his teaching to be continued during his absence. It finally agreed only after Professor Rennie (chemistry) had expressed his willingness to undertake Lamb’s duties (23), and subject to the passage of the following addition to Statute 2 — of the Professors and Lectures (24):

‘2A. The Council way at its discretion grant to any Professor or Lecturer or any officer of the University leave of absence for any time not exceeding one year on such Professor or Lecturer or other officer providing a substitute, to be approved by the Council, to act in his stead during such leave of absence.’

Thus was a study-leave provision written into the University’s legislation, the first such provision in Australia (25). It remains a generous but essential feature of Australian academic life.

As subsequent events were to show, the University also determined that if, as it suspected, a replacement for Lamb would soon be required, then it would seek a professor for a combined chair of mathematics and physics.

W.h. Bragg’s Boyhood and Youth

William Bragg’s early life was extremely tough and testing. He did not remember his mother well, for she died in 1869 when he was barely seven years old (26). His father lived on but is almost totally absent from Bragg’s later autobiographical notes. W.H.B. (27) grew into manhood with almost no remembered parental love or guidance. His boyhood was totally dominated, as was the rest of the Bragg family, by his Uncle William, with whom he went to live at Market Harborough in Leicestershire later in 1869. Here ‘there were no parties for children; we never went to other people’s houses, and no children came to ours. I think my uncle was too “particular” ... He used to lecture us terribly, talking by the hour, and I suspect he was not to be shaken in his opinions by any one’ (28).

School offered some outlet. The old grammar school had been reopened, also in 1869, in ‘a quaint structure raised on wooden pillars’. The new master, Wood, ‘was an able man, I believe, ... and I got on quickly enough’ (29). In 1873, at the age of eleven, W.H.B. went up for the Oxford Junior Local Examinations at Leicester and was the youngest boy in England to get through, although he failed in Church history and Greek. An aptitude for mathematics and modern languages rather than the subjects of the old classical syllabus was already becoming apparent (30).

The few organized school ball-games were ‘a great delight’, and there were some happy times with his cousin Fanny, who also lived with Uncle William. otherwise, whatever enjoyment, satisfaction and contentment the young W.H.B. found in life were discovered primarily within himself. He was already a solitary child: “I liked peace and was content to be alone with books or jobs of any sort’ (31). But he was not, I suggest, without personal ambition; ~his tough childhood had made him self-reliant, quietly self-confident and self-content. These characteristics would sustain him for the rest of his life, and they would be immediately advantageous at King William’s College, on the Isle of Man, where he spent his youth.

‘In 1875 my father came to Harborough and demanded me; he wanted to send me to school at King William’s College ...’, where his brother-in-law was a master. ‘I think he became alarmed lest he should lose me altogether’ (32). There are but few accounts of the college in the second half of the 19th century (33), and these do not paint an attractive picture. King William’s had improved from the unhappy state described by Wilson, but it was no better than many other English public schools, where the conditions, as viewed by the present author from a considerable distance in position and time, can only be described as barbaric. The physical conditions could be extremely harsh, the social and psychological conditions no better. Cruelty among the boys, including the fagging system, was extraordinary, engendered no doubt to a significant degree by the fearful beatings that masters meted out to their pupils. If sexual imbalance and repression were endemic, then the sexual inhibitions of the masters were certainly unhelpful. And the fanatical religious revivals that swept numerous schools surely added to the unrest and confusion which the boys must have felt.

Regarding the ‘religious storm’ that swept the college in his final year, W.H.B. much later devoted two emotion-filled pages of his brief autobiography to this time, and it clearly affected him profoundly. The headmaster did not then resolve his difficulties; nor later, it seems, did the established church. W.H.B. finally settled for a scientific-intellectual humanism of his own making (34).

W.H.B. survived and eventually prospered in this environment by adhering strictly to the rules of the college, by applying himself diligently to his studies, by enjoying to the full the sporting, social and recreational opportunities that the school increasingly provided, and by submerging almost totally the emotions he had already learnt to hide. As he said of the school religious revival: ‘the storm passed in time, by sheer exhaustion, and the fortunate distraction of other things, work and play’ (35).

W.H.B. found much satisfaction in his school work, especially the mathematics with the Rev. D.D. Jenkins, ‘a good fellow, keen, and a good teacher’ (36). The ultimate academic goal for school and boys alike was a scholarship to one of the Oxford or Cambridge- colleges (37). W.H.B.’s surviving school reports testify to his exceptional mathematical ability and achievements (38). In 1880 he won, as His Excellency the Lieut. Governor’s Prize for Mathematics in the Sixth Form, the two volumes of Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism; a formidable gift indeed (39). His scientific interests also extended beyond mathematics; in 1879 he won the college’s Byrom Geology Prize (40).

Outside the classroom, W.H.B. was a praepositor (prefect) in the years 1879 to 1881, and Head of the School in 1880-81. He was secretary of the Chess Association, an active member of the Literary and Debating Society, a fair cricketer, wanting ‘freedcm and spirit in his play’ (41), and a tennis and fives player. But it was the annual theatricals with the Histrionics Society that W.H.B. enjoyed most. It was ‘great fun, the best event of the year’, he remembered. ‘We made scenery, collected costumes, rehearsed at times when we might have been doing lessons, and generally broke away from the ordinary run’ (42). He was Bassanio in the Merchant of Venice and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, but it was in farce, behind a theatrical mask, that W.H.B. let himself go as at no other time. The Barrovian reporter was lyrical about his performance: ‘the whole life of the piece was Bragg, as Susan, the maid of all work. From his first word “Lawks” to the end he kept the audience in continual fits of laughter’ (43).

In the Easter week of 1880 examinations were held at Trinity College, Cambridge, for election to College Scholarships and Exhibitions. The Cambridge University Reporter of 13 April announced that Bragg had been awarded a Minor Scholarship, valued at 175 per year. The King William’s College headmaster, Joshua Hughes-Games, described it as ‘the highest honour open to a school-boy; and he has won one at an unusually early age, and against unusually strong competition’ (44). Three other entrants had beaten him to the more lucrative Foundation Scholarships.

Because of his youth (17 years old) and on the advice of both Trinity College (45) and Hughes-Gaines (46), W.H.B. returned to King William’s College for a further year. He participated successfully and enjoyably in almost every available school activity, but his academic work stagnated, so that when he went up again to try for an improved Trinity scholarship he did not do as well as in 1880. The ‘effective cause for my stagnation was the wave of religious experience that swept over the upper classes of the school during that year’, he remembered (47).

Cambridge

Bragg recalled that ‘I went up to Cambridge in 1881, taking the rather unusual course of beginning work there in the Long [vacation]’ (48). Three Australians entered Trinity College that year, two of whom W.H.B. was to become particularly aware of: William Sheppard, born in Sydney and educated in Brisbane (49), and Sydney Talbot Smith from Adelaide, whom he met on the lacrosse field. W.H.B.’s tutor was H.M. Taylor, a friend of Horace Lamb. He was allocated rooms in Whewell Court (50). In that first long vacation W.H.B. ‘tried to get through an exam that would excuse me the Littlego, and I failed in Latin’ (51); he had to take it in November after all. He passed Part I in the Second Class and Part II in the First; further proof, if any were needed, that mathematics was his strength (52). During this period ‘it was lonely ... and I had no companions’. Furthermore, ‘I could not afford, or thought I could not afford, to join the Union or the Boating Club’ (53). His carefulness and reserve held him back.

When classes began he was accepted by Routh, who is remembered as the greatest of all the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos tutors. W.H.B.’s acceptance is indicative of his own awareness of the Cambridge scene and of Routh’s early appreciation of his abilities. In the College examinations of 1882 W.H.B, was awarded a freshmen mathematics prize and his minor Scholarship was coverted into a Foundation Scholarship (54). His success gave him ‘a standing in the College. I had the right then to join the Trinity Tennis Club without election, and to wear the strawberry and cream blazer; which was a source of pride. I sat in the scholars’ seat in chapel . . . ’ (55). In 1883 he again won a College mathematics prize.

The next year, 1884, brought the examinations for Parts I and II of the Mathematical Tripos. The details are less important, but it should be noted more generally that the Tripos of the 1880s not only encompassed such Newtonian subjects as statics, dynamics, hydrostatics, optics, gravitational theory and astronomy, but also heat and electricity and magnetism. It had, in fact, a very applied mathematics flavour, providing a wide general education in the subject and fitting its graduates for a range of subsequent studies (56). By the time of the examinations W.H.B. was anxious and weary, but all this was forgotten in the elation with which he greeted the result — 3rd Wrangler: ‘I was fairly lifted up into a new world. I had a new confidence; I was extraordinarily happy.’ He could still feel the joy of it 43 years later (57).

During the autumn of’ 1884 W.H.B. worked for Part III of the Tripos, as it then was. When he later applied for the Adelaide Chair, the first reference he supplied was from Mr. Glazebrook, and its contents are most interesting in the present discussion (58):

‘Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, Dec. 1, 1885.

Mr. W.H. Bragg of Trinity College attended several courses of my lectures while preparing for the Mathematical Tripos and since that time he has worked under my suggestions at the Cavendish Laboratory while studying practical physics. In his preparation for the third part of the Mathematical Tripos I supervised his reading as University Lecturer in the branch he was taking up. I have also examined him in various College Examinations. I have thus had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with Mr. Bragg’s powers and I have no hesitation in recommending him most strongly to the Electors for the Professorship of Mathematics and Physics at Adelaide as being extremely well qualified to discharge the duties of the post and likely in every way to give satisfaction.

R.T. Glazebook, M.A., F.R.S. Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Trinity College, Demonstrator of Physics and University Lecturer in Mathematics.’

The branch of mathematics for which Glazebrook was particularly responsible was entitled ‘Advanced Physics’ in the Cambridge University Reporter, and involved the subjects of waves and sound, higher geometrical optics and the theory of light. This short, simple letter clearly throws considerable new light on the progress of W.H.B.’s career. We may note particularly both the waves and sound topic, a precursor to similar lectures to physics and music students in Adelaide, to later studies of the acoustic problems of the new Elder Hall at the University of Adelaide (59), and subsequently to extensive asdic and sound­ranging experiments by W.H.B. and W.L.B. during the appalling conflict of 1914–18 (60); and also the theory of light, something W.H.B. must have remembered when, during his own research work in Adelaide suggesting the material nature of X-rays and y-ray (61), others stressed their similarity to light. Bragg’s interests had already swung towards what we now call physics.

With the conclusion of the Part III examinations and the award of his First in the winter of 1884/85, W.H.B. was confronted with the question of his future. In more normal circumstances a Fellowship at Trinity College would have beckoned, but in 1884 his ‘chances did not look well, because in 1883 the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th wranglers were all Trinity men, and in my year the 1st (Sheppard), 2nd (Workman), 3rd (myself) and 5th (Cassie) were all Trinity men’. Had he had independent means, he could have contemplated leisurely study ‘amongst books and people in Cambridge’ (62). He was offered a commission by a publisher to solve all the problems in Smith’s Conics;but he ‘had other things to do’ (63). These ‘things’ involved work in the Cavendish Laboratory. It had been ‘Maxwell’s view of the function of the laboratory that it should be a place to which men who had taken the Mathematical Tripos could come, and, after a short training in making accurate measurements, begin a piece of original research’ (64). This scheme continued during Lord Rayleigh’s professorship and in the early years of J.J. Thomson’s tenure of the Cavendish chair, to which he had been appointed in December 1884. Thomson was himself a notable product of the scheme (65).

As we have seen, W.H.B. had a genuine interest in the physical sciences. He was an ideal candidate for the conversion course from mathematician to experimental scientist; indeed, he had already embarked upon it. He studied in the Cavendish for nearly the whole of 1885. All of this makes his later statement, ‘I had never done any [physics], nor worked at the Cavendish except for a couple of terms’ (66), hard to understand. Appointed to a joint mathematics and physics chair in Adelaide, Bragg for a number of years referred to himself as Professor of Mathematics only, despite his increasing personal dedication to physics (67). The primacy of the Mathematical Tripos and of mathematics in his own education no doubt shaped his view, as too his modesty (68), although his old Trinity and Adelaide colleague Sydney Talbot Smith saw it a little differently: ‘Well, we know how clever men can delight to exaggerate their own shortcomings. As Bragg always humorously told the story, he just bought some books on physics, studied them on the voyage, and ... was only about two jumps ahead of his students’ (69).

His acquaintance with J.J. Thomson was also central to W.H.B.’s future. In 1882 Thomson had been elected to an Assistant Lectureship in mathematics at Trinity College, where he also resided, in the Great Court; the paths of the two young men must have crossed often. We know J.J. played the card game whist, and got his exercise by taking walks on a very regular basis. He was also a sports enthusiast (70). W.H.B. was a whist player, and had played the game with his brother Jack when Jack was seriously ill at King William’s College. W.H.B. also recalled that, at Cambridge, ‘every afternoon I played a game ... or went for a walk’ (71). In 1885 W.H.B. too had rooms in the Great Court at Trinity, a reflection of his new status. These occasions are conjectural, but there is one other certain avenue of intimate contact between W.H.B. and J.J. in addition to that at the Cavendish; namely tennis. W.H.B. later recalled, “I knew him [J.J.] pretty well at that time [the end of 1885]; he and Carey Wilberforce and I used to play tennis regularly together (72).

If, throughout much of his time at Cambridge, W.H.B. knew little of matters outside his own line of work and was ‘very much shut in on myself, unventuresome, shy and ignorant’, then in the year after his graduation university life was ‘spacious and beautiful’, Cambridge ‘a lovely place’ and Trinity ‘something to be very proud to belong to’ (73).

Appointment to Adelaide

Horace Lamb’s appointment as Professor of Pure Mathematics in the Owens College, Manchester, was formally confirmed on Friday, 2 October 1885 (74). According to a plan previously drafted between Lamb, the University of Adelaide and the Agent-General for South Australia in London, Sir Arthur Blyth, arrangements for the appointment of a successor were implemented immediately. On Monday, 5 October, Blyth wrote to J.J. Thomson at Cambridge, asking him ‘to aid the University in the selection of a successor to Professor Lamb’, and ‘to name the newspapers in which you think the advertisement should appear’ (75). Thomson agreed, and with Lamb and Blyth formed the Board of Selection, with full authority to make the appointment without further reference to Adelaide. Such an untrammeled procedure was not universal in Australian universities at the time, but it is a vivid illustration of the reliance they placed upon Oxbridge professors and graduates for many decades. There was one notable Australian applicant for the position, William Sutherland, M.A. (Melbourne), B.Sc. (London), who later because an outstanding theoretical chemical physicist (76); he had to send his application to London (77).

The conditions, as set out in the advertisement, were as follows (78):

‘The University of Adelaide

Elder Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Physics.

The Council invite applications for the above Professorship. Salary £800 per annum. The appointment will be for a term of five years, subject to renewal at the discretion of the Council. Salary will date from 1st March, 1886 and the Professor will be expected to enter on his duties on that date. An allowance will be made for travelling expenses. Applications, with testimonials, should reach Sir Arthur Blyth ... not later than 1st December 1885.’

The circumstances surrounding W.H.B.’s last-minute application for the position are well known. Walking along King’s Parade one morning to attend a lecture by Thomson at the Cavendish, Bragg was joined by the lecturer, who asked if Sheppard, the Senior Wrangler in his year, was going in for the post; a logical question as Sheppard was an Australian. W.H.B. thought not; and he then ‘asked J.J. whether I might have any chance, and he said that he thought I might’. W.H.B. was astonished at the whole episode: ‘it had never occurred to me that anyone so young might be eligible’. Also the ‘salary seemed too big for such untried people’ (79). His naivety very nearly cost him the appointment that was to shape the course of his future life.

‘The total number of candidates is twenty three’, the Agent-General reported to the Registrar of the University of Adelaide, ‘but one of these has sent in an informal application which cannot be entertained’ (80). J.E.A. Steggall, Second Wrangler in 1878 and First Smith’s Prizeman, was the applicant concerned. He would surely have been a strong candidate, but he declined to pursue his provisional application (81). Even without Steggall the field was an impressive one: 15 Cambridge graduates, of whom 14 were Wranglers and two Smith’s Prizemen, two Oxford graduates, two London, one Trinity College, Dublin, and two whose background I have been unable to trace. Thomson and Lamb met Blyth to discuss the applications and decided to draw up a short list for interview in London. It consisted of J.F. Adair, 7th Wrangler in 1878, W.H. Bragg, and C. Graham, 3rd Wrangler in 1878 and Second Smith’s Prizeman. We may wonder why the only Senior Wrangler and First Smith’s Prizeman on the list was not invited to attend. The reason is probably contained in the following extract from W.H.B.’s autobiographical notes (82):

‘By the way, I forgot to say ... that the electors could have sent out a Senior Wrangler of great ability, but he was not safe with the bottle. They thought, however, that they had better consult an Adelaide man who happened to be in London, and he was in favour of the young man who so far had kept off the drink. The Adelaide man was my future father-in-law [Sir Charles Todd].’

Lamb reported to the Chancellor of the University of Adelaide that ‘By far the ablest man in the list was excluded ... on personal grounds’ (83). When the electors met in London on Thursday, 17 December, Adair was absent owing to illness and the interviews were short. The Board had two additional references for W.H.B.; his College tutor, Taylor, thought him ‘a sound and careful mathematician’, and Routh certified that ‘he has great mathematical talent’. That evening, at Market Harborough, a telegram broke the exciting news. In the dark of nightfall Uncle William broke down and wept.

The next day Lamb hastened to give the Adelaide Chancellor ‘some account of the manner in which we have discharged our stewardship’ (84). He reported:

‘ . . . ..Yesterday the interviews were held and — after some slight hesitation between two of the candidates — we unanimously recommend ... Mr. Bragg of Trinity College, Cambridge... It is evident that his math abilities are of the highest, and he has also worked at Physics in the Cavendish Laboratory under my coadjutor in the appointment, who says that his work is very good. I was up at Cambridge a week before our last meeting and ... Mr. Bragg bears a high reputation in every way... As far as I can judge, the only possible source of misgiving as to the propriety of our choice is Mr. Bragg’s youth, he is only 23. Personally, I do not think much of this. I cannot but remember that I was myself not much older when I went to Adelaide .....

I can testify also that Prof. J.J. Thomson took great care and trouble in this matter, and showed the greatest anxiety to come to a fair decision.

With kind regards I am my dear Chief Justice Yours very sincerely, Horace Lamb.

‘P.S. The most curious incident in the award was a letter from Lord Carnarvon (Viceroy of Ireland) arguing that there might be a danger that ‘justice to Ireland’ would not be done unless some Irish Mathⁿ of repute were put on the Board to look after the interests of Irish candidates. Sir A. Blyth sent a very dignified reply.’

Two years later J.J. Thomson confided to his old friend Richard Threlfall, by then Professor of Physics at Sydney University, regarding a further application from Adair for a Demonstratorship (85):

‘I do not think he has a very extensive knowledge of the book-work of Physics but he is a good Mathematician (in fact he very nearly got Bragg’s appointment) ... he is a gentleman, but an Irish one, and this is my chief doubt as Sir Arthur Blyth told me Irishmen were very unpopular in Australia.’

Graham too was an Irishman, as was Thomas Lyle, another applicant for the Adelaide Chair. Lyle had the added apparent disadvantage of having completed his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, although he was soon to follow Bragg to Australia as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. It is perhaps not surprising that late in 1885 the Earl of Carnarvon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had written to the Agent-General for South Australia supporting claims by Trinity College, Dublin, that ‘Irish Candidates for Educational posts have been frequently overlooked by the Colonial authorities ... in mathematics especially ... as these appointments are practically in the hands of Cambridge men’ (86). Blyth replied that his instructions from Adelaide did not permit him to accede to the request, but promised to forward the correspondence to Adelaide for further consideration. He also pointed out that Irish candidates had been successful in previous professional appointments. Blyth was sensitive to local prejudices. South Australians were predominantly English and Welsh and very strongly non-conformist. There was a lower proportion of both Irish immigrants and Roman Catholics in Adelaide than in other Australian capital cities, and those Irish men and women who had emigrated were predominantly working class and unskilled, sometimes uncouth and generally disliked (87).

The choice of W.H.B. was a bold one, and we may wonder if it was an equally daring decision of W.H.B. to accept; but the answer is probably no. Australia was a well-known and integral part of the British Empire, and service in the colonies was a well-trodden path for capable Englishmen. The Cambridge colleges of the time had a surprisingly large number of Australian undergraduates drawn principally from the newly emerging upper class. Sheppard and Talbot Smith have already been mentioned, and many of the prominent Adelaide families were also represented: Barker, Barr-Smith, O’Halloran-Giles, Fowler, Robin, Ibbotson and Murray (88). Although W.H.B. apparently knew none of them well, even he cannot have failed to recognize an Australian presence in Cambridge. In addition, the position was a professorship, where he could be his own master, with a ‘magnificent’ salary, and all the adventure of going abroad to a new country. As for the dual nature of the appointment, it was common for the young Australian universities to ask their professors to cover more than one discipline, and joint lectureships in mathematics and physics were widespread until the 1920s. W.H.B. probably viewed the duality of the Adelaide chair with much less trepidation than has previously been suggested; the mathematics surely held no terrors, and he was clearly far better prepared for the physics than was earlier understood. Only the extent of the demand on his time and physical stamina lay menacingly hidden.

Preparations for W.H.B.’s departure proceeded apace: ‘the next three weeks was a grand time’ (89). During 1885 his father had died, an event quite unrecorded in his autobiographical notes; and the day before he sailed his aunt and Uncle William came to London with the news that his brother Jack had just died. At the King William College 1882 Prize Day, Jack had been singled out for special attention for having obtained full marks for all the sixth-form mathematics papers set (90), but his very promising career had finally succumbed to a constantly recurring illness. Many years later, in 1915, W.H.B. would lose another gifted young man tragically close to his heart (91). Yet neither of the present tragedies could dull his elation: ‘next day [14 January 18861 they saw me off at Tilbury, and there I was away on the great adventure, thrilled by it’ (92).

First Two Years in Adelaide

The boat trip to Australia on the Rome was an exciting, relaxing and fascinating journey for the young professor. He read some of Deschanel’s Electricity and magnetism on the way (93). The long journey provided a useful transition from the cold and damp of the northern mid-winter to the torrid southern summer in the heat and openness of the Adelaide plain. W. H. B. was landed by tender at Glenelg, where, only 50 years before, the first settlers of the new Colony had also come ashore. Next day Dr. Alfred Lendon called for W.H.B. and took him on his rounds in his horse-drawn Victoria. That first day was one of the most important of W.H.B.’s 23 years in Australia, the people he met symbolic of his new life. First there was Lendon himself, who became a close personal friend and with whom W.H.B. boarded during his early years in Adelaide. He was to become one of Adelaide’s leading medical identities and to hold numerous medical and academic posts (94). He would be best man at W. H. B.’s wedding three years later, and W.H.B. would be godfather to Lendon’s elder son.

During that first day they also called at Dr. Way’s and were refreshed with green figs; ‘lovely I thought’ (95). The Hon. Samuel Way Ll.D. was the Chief Justice of South Australia and Chancellor of the University. His home, Montefiore in North Adelaide, was one of the city’s best-known houses; it had a magnificent garden and large hothouses, and Way used it extensively for entertaining, for which it was renowned. It also contained Way’s outstanding personal library of more than 14,000 volumes and his magnificent art collection. Way was a staunch Methodist. He represented better than anyone else in the colony the academic and social milieu into which W.H.B. was soon to be accepted (96).

Finally the two newly acquainted young bachelors trotted down the hill, across the Morphett Street Bridge over the River Torrens lake, and soon arrived at the neat clump of observatory Buildings in the West Parklands. The ample two­storeyed home of Charles Todd, Government Astronomer, Postmaster-General and Superintendent of Telegraphs, looked out over West Terrace. Here they had been invited for supper, and here W.H.B. met the Todd family for the first time. Charles Todd was famous throughout the country as the architect and builder of the Trans-continental Overland Telegraph Line, one of the epic achievements of Australian history (97). He was genial and friendly, possessed of an over­bountiful fund of humour which reveled in puns, spoonerisms and riddles. He was an accomplished astronomer and physical scientist, one of the very few in the colony. W.H.B. would find pleasure in his company and conversation; together they would pioneer radio in Australia in the 1890s (98). Alice Todd, his wife, impressed W.H.B. at once (99). She too has a memorial associated with the overland Telegraph; for during construction in 1871, the sub-overseer W.W. Mills had discovered a large spring of water in his section of the line and had named it Alice Springs, in honour of the Superintendent’s wife.

What W.H.B. does not immediately mention, but what we can surely guess caught his eye, were the other members of the Todd family. The two sons Charles Edward and Hedley Lawrence were in their middle twenties, beginning medical and business careers respectively. In later years W.H.B. would be consulted by Dr. Charles on the medical uses of the new X-rays, and by Hedley on the electrification of the city. But most of all there were the four daughters: Lizzie, Maude, Gwen (16 years old) and Lorna. Their irresponsible chatter delighted W.H.B. most. It was a revelation to a young man taught to weigh every word he uttered and, until that day, almost totally deprived of female companionship and affection. They nicknamed him ‘The Fressor’, and he blossomed under the cheerful and inconsequential atmosphere they created (100).

W.H.B. and the third daughter, Gwendoline, courted, married and built their subsequent lives together, and their relationship will repay further study, for this particular family was to be quite unique in all the history of science. W.H.B. supplied the solidity and the direction of their lives. Gwendoline the social and family environment. He depended on her for all the womanly qualities that his earlier life had lacked. The large, emotional plaque that he placed in the entrance hall of The Royal Institution after his wife died is evocative testimony to his affection and gratitude. Its text speaks of Davy and Faraday but its symbols are a child surrounded by birds in flight. She gave him their children, and she lifted his spirits to the sky (101). William Bragg had arrived in Adelaide.

When W.H.B. entered the University he found an institution still struggling to establish itself. A recent account by Blainey of the University of Melbourne also applied to Adelaide at this time (102):

‘The basic weakness of the university was neither shortage of money nor conservatism of thought, but rather a shortage of students who wanted to study and who could afford to study. The university capped the pyramid of education, but the base of that pyramid was weak.’

W.H.B. was responsible for all the pure and applied mathematics and all the physics and practical physics teaching, and for much of the secondary-school public examining in these subjects as well. There is no precise information on his university teaching load in 1886; fortunately, in that first year there were no third-year mathematics students. As for examinations, by the end of his first year Bragg had set and marked 29 major examination papers: 7 in March just after his arrival (2 university supplementary mathematics papers and 5 Matriculation exams), 10 mathematics and physics papers for B.A. and B.Sc. students at the end of the academic year in November, and 3 exams for the South Australian Scholarship and 9 papers for the Junior and Matriculation public examinations in December. One can readily picture the long evening hours W.H.B. spent pouring over Horace Lamb’s syllabuses and previous examination papers in an endeavour to acquaint himself with the requirements of such a wide range of courses (103).

In addition there were 48 evening lectures to be given to a class of ten students in advanced mathematics; men and women who were employed during the day and who sought to further their education in the evenings. Adelaide had but one government secondary school at this time, the Advanced School for Girls. Secondary education was otherwise the sole preserve of private and denominational establishments and therefore available only to those families that could afford the fees; and in South Australia the 1880s were a time of depression and widespread unemployment. As if all this were not enough, W.H.B. also gave lectures to second-year music students on acoustics, a course in which he took particular delight. It was no doubt based on his studies with Glazebrook and he filled his lectures with demonstrations and analogies. Of all the lectures he gave in Adelaide that first year, he kept only these notes; they are still among his papers in the archives of The Royal Institution (104).

During 1886 W.H.B. wrote to the Council of the University on three occasions: first to ask for lengths of rubber tubing for the Physical Laboratory, second to point out that ‘in the mathematical lecture room there are no desks or tables on which students may take notes during lecture[s] ‘, and third to request the purchase of 17 books for the Library (105). Later that same year he had returned only 6 of the 47 texts he had earlier borrowed from that same library; preparation for lectures and other very basic matters of teaching filled his days. In October he was elected Dean (and Chairman) of the Professorial Board.

Nor were recreational activities neglected. The game of lacrosse was introduced in South Australia in 1885, and in the winter of 1886 W.H.B. joined his old Cambridge team-mate, Talbot Smith in the Adelaide team. The Adelaide Observer newspaper reported that W.H.B. rapidly established himself as ‘without doubt, the finest all-round player we have’ (106). In future years he would be the central figure in the expansion of the competition (107). In the summer there were games of tennis on the university court and elsewhere (108).

In October of his first year in Adelaide, Professor Bragg took the male lead in a comic drama in two acts entitled ‘The Jacobite’ (109). It was presented in the Torrens Park Theatre, a magnificent auditorium built by Robert and Joanna Barr-Smith at their massive home at Mitcham, in the Adelaide foothills. Barr Smith had large pastoral holdings, and his company, Elder Smith & Co., pioneered much of the pastoral settlement of South Australia. His philanthropy became legendary, the University not the least of his beneficiaries. Mr. & Mrs. Barr-Smith were lavish and charming hosts, and the theatre, with its intricate plaster work, oval windows, fully equipped stage and seating for 200 people, became the venue for countless entertainments (110). W.H.B.’s participation in at least one of these is a reminder of his love of theatricals, and indication of his immediate acceptance into the highest level of Adelaide society, and a crucial pointer to his future fame. Seventeen years later Barr­Smith would provide the money with which W.H.B. purchased his first radium sample and thereby began his extraordinary research career (111).

In January 1887, during the long summer vacation, W.H.B. visited Melbourne and Sydney; young, moneyed and energetic, he was keen to explore his vast new homeland. He travelled 500 miles by train to Melbourne, where he was able to use Routh’s letter of introduction to Professor Nanson (112), and then by boat to Sydney, where Richard Threlfall welcomed him (113). Two months earlier, and after several years of discussion, a preliminary meeting of an Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (A.A.A.S.) had been held in Sydney, of which W.H.B. was no doubt anxious to hear a first-hand report. In the years ahead, the regular meetings of the A.A.A.S. would provide him with invaluable opportunities for professional and personal development (114).

His first year in Adelaide may have been full of activity, but the second year, 1887, was the one in which W.H.B. experienced the full impact of his new responsibilities. In July he recorded the details of his weekly teaching commitments (see Table 1) (115). There were 28 weeks in the academic year and W.H.B. therefore spent 672 contact hours with his students in that year, 168 of them in the evenings. Even by the standards of the day this was an extraordinary teaching load, made all the more remarkable by the fact that he did not have a single academic colleague to assist with student difficulties or the 21 university examinations involved, and only one part-time laboratory assistant to help build, prepare and supervise the lecture demonstrations and laboratory experiments. It is said that W.H.B. was an unimpressive lecturer to start with, being too careful and too mathematical (116). That he later became renowned as a lecturer without peer may owe something to the level of practice he had in Adelaide during his early years there.

This incredible commitment in no way reduced that to his other duties. In March W.H.B. set and marked five mathematics, one natural philosophy and one English history Matriculation examination, and in November another five -mathematics and two physics public examination papers (117). On 27 July 1887, W.H.B. wrote to the Council of the University (118):

TABLE 1

W.H. Bragg’s teaching commitments, at the University of Adelaide for the academic year 1887 (note 115)

‘I beg respectfully to call your attention to the large increase in the duties which devolve upon me as Professor of Mathematics, and to my need of assistance to enable me to fulfill them satisfactorily... Next year at least one new class must be started in accordance with the University regulations.

‘These lectures are so many that I cannot make them fit in with the lectures of the other professors... [and] not only is there no time to get all these lectures in, but the strain of so much teaching is very heavy: to do so at all well is beyond the strength of one man....

‘I would rather suggest that when it is possible an assistant lecturer in mathematics be appointed

The matter was referred to the Education Committee, which recommended in August that, ‘for the sake of the students as well as Professor Bragg, it is desirable that help should be given him next year if the funds will permit’ (119). In December W.H.B. wrote to the Chancellor urging that the recommendation be carried out. He proposed that a salary of £300 a year be offered, £100 f ram the Evening Class Fund and £100 from the University chest; ‘ the other £100 I will provide myself for the first two years, if the Council will then relieve me of that duty’ (120). It was a generous and astute offer.

There were six excellent applicants when the position was advertised shortly afterwards. The Education Committee discussed them fully in January, ‘and ultimately Professor Bragg, who was about to start for Tasmania, was desired en route to see one candidate in Melbourne, and one in Tasmania; and to report which of the two he considered the better fitted for the lectureship, the Committee to recommend the gentleman so selected to the Council for appointment’ (121). W.H.B. Was going to Tasmania to join Gwen and Charlie Todd, who had gone over for a holiday; and from Hobart he wrote to the Registrar of the University to report (122):

‘I have chosen Chapman as assistant lecturer: he knew a great deal more than the other man, was energetic and strong in appearance, whilst the other was of the scholastic, weak-eyed type. I think Chapman will do very well. By the way he is an oarsman [and] has rowed 6 for Trinity against Ormond. Will you please send him a Calendar as soon as it comes out?’

Robert Chapman, M.A. and B.C.E. from, the University of Melbourne, thus began a lifelong commitment to tertiary education in South Australia (123). We may wonder about some of these stated selection criteria, as we earlier questioned some aspects of the procedures associated with W.H.B.’s own appointment, but in each case the result was quite exceptional; Bragg and Chapman were to become two of the University of Adelaide’s most dedicated servants and most illustrious scholars.

W.H.B. had his assistant. Furthermore, when he proposed to Gwen in Tasmania she accepted, subject to approval. Charlie telegraphed their parents and the answer came back: ‘say everything kind to both’ (124). For W.H.B. going to Australia had indeed become ‘like sunshine and fresh invigorating air’ (125).

Acknowledgements

The research, of which this paper is the first substantial result, has benefited from the generous assistance of many people whom I am unable to mention individually but to whom. I wish to express my gratitude. These include library and other institutional staff as well as individual people in Adelaide, London, Cambridge, Castletown (Isle of Man), Market Harborough and Melbourne. I am indebted to the various institutions noted throughout the paper for permission to use and to quote from material in their care. Most particularly I wish to thank the Bragg and Adrian families for their generous assistance, Professor Rod. Home for much guidance and encouragement, Mrs. Margaret Gibbs for painstaking research work, and the Australian Research Grants Scheme for financial assistance.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a meeting entitled ‘The Lives and Works of William and Lawrence Bragg’, arranged by The Royal Institution Centre for the History of Science and Technology, and held at The Royal Institution on 13 January 1984.