RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
retired at the age of sixty, and received the K.C.B. for his official services. He died at Sidcup in 1917.
The lectures given by J. W. L. Glaisher on pure mathematics were the most interesting I ever attended on that subject; indeed he made me at one time quite enthusiastic about elliptic functions. The lectures were very clear and he covered a good deal of ground ; above all, they were never dull and were very human. If he was talking about a theorem discovered by X he would break out with " X was a great mathematician but he was a queer fish. Whenever he was introduced to a pretty girl he would, when he went home, write a sonnet about her and send it to her " ; or of Y, " He once stabbed a man and there was the dickens of a row ". This gave a certain liveliness to his lectures which was not conspicuous in those of some of his contemporaries. The dullness of some of these can hardly be imagined. One of them adopted a method which I have never seen before or since. He hardly spoke a word but wrote steadily on the blackboard ; when he had filled it he said, " Copy that ! " While we were doing this he was filling another board, and so the lecture went on. Glaisher's father was a well-known meteorologist who had gained great celebrity by making balloon ascents of record heights to take meteorological observations. Like his son he revelled in scientific societies, and his present to his son when he came of age was to pay the fees for life membership to the British Association, and to practically all the mathematical and astronomical societies whose membership could be obtained in this simple way. Glaisher was Second Wrangler in 1871, when John Hopkinson was Senior. He was then twenty-three years old. He was elected Fellow and Lecturer at Trinity 44