| Description | He received Larmor's letter in London. The difficulty was one of tact, not science, on how to tell Lord Kelvin that 'he is rooting at a mare's nest that has been rifled'. There can be no doubt that a nonconductor and ohmic resistance would ultimately set a conductor in motion. He notes 'Rowland's case' which would not apply to atoms, and would not explain rotation, and therefore not leading to Kelvin's solution, but to [Hendrik] Lorentz's. The Becquerel-Kelvon view is untenable, he believes. In a postscript, he wonders what sort of person woudl be needed to succeed Kelvin at Glasgow, not supposing that [Oliver] Lodge would be interested. |