First published in 1873, this co-authored biography of the Scottish physicist, Alpine explorer, and university leader James David Forbes (1809 1868) includes extracts from Forbes' letters. John Campbell Shairp, Forbes' successor as principal of the United College of the University of St Andrews, writes of Forbes' personal, family, and professional life, including his years at St Andrews. Forbes' student and his successor in the Natural Philosophy chair at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Guthrie Tait, himself an accomplished mathematical physicist who co-wrote, with Lord Kelvin, Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), discusses Forbes' scientific achievements and contributions. A. Adams-Reilly, a celebrated Irish mountaineer, cartographer, and friend of Forbes, writes of the latter's Alpine travels and his work and interest in glaciers. In Shairp's words, in addition to all of his academic accomplishments, Forbes was also Britain's 'father of Alpine adventure'.

'The term 'natural philosophy' was used by Newton, and is still used in British Universities, to denote the investigation of laws in the material world, and the deduction of results not directly observed.' This definition, from the Preface to the second edition of 1879, defines the proposed scope of the work: the two volumes reissued here are the only completed part of a survey of the entirety of the physical sciences by Lord Kelvin and his fellow Scot, Peter Guthrie Tait, first published in 1867. Although the partnership ceased after eighteen years of collaboration, the published books, containing chapters on kinematics, dynamics and statics, had a great influence on the development of physics in the second half of the nineteenth century.

'The term 'natural philosophy' was used by Newton, and is still used in British Universities, to denote the investigation of laws in the material world, and the deduction of results not directly observed.' This definition, from the Preface to the second edition of 1879, defines the proposed scope of the work: the two volumes reissued here are the only completed part of a survey of the entirety of the physical sciences by Lord Kelvin and his fellow Scot, Peter Guthrie Tait, first published in 1867. Although the partnership ceased after eighteen years of collaboration, the published books, containing chapters on kinematics, dynamics and statics, had a great influence on the development of physics in the second half of the nineteenth century.