Transcript

of

Arthur Mason Worthington, C.B., M.A., F.R.S., F.R.A.S. [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  49, (1917), pp. 25-26.

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1917 Barnstaple meeting. More information on Professor Worthington’s life and career is available in Wikipedia. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Professor Worthington was born at Manchester on June 11th, 1852, and was the younger son of Mr. Robert Worthington, Crumpsall Hall, Manchester, and Elizabeth, younger daughter of Mr. Robert Brewin, Birstall Hall, near Leicester. He married, in 1877, Helen, younger daughter of Mr. Thomas Solly, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law. He was educated at Rugby; Trinity College, Oxford (where he took his M.A. degree) ; Owens College, Manchester ; and University of Berlin, in the Laboratory of Professor Helmholtz. From 1877-9 he was headmaster of the Salt Schools, Shipley, Yorks, and assistant-master of Clifton College from 1880-5. From 1887-8 he was headmaster and Professor of Physics in H.M. Dockyard School, Portsmouth, and from 1888-1908 in the Royal Naval Engineering College, Devonport. From 1909 to 1911 he was Professor of Physics, Royal Naval College, Greenwich. His publications included various papers on physical subjects, Physical Laboratory Practice, Dynamics of Rotation, The Splash of a Drop, and A Study in Splashes.
Professor Worthington was devoted to the study of photography, in which he acquired remarkable proficiency. He made exhaustive inquiries into the results that followed the fall of drops of liquids and solid substances into water. The rapidity with which the photographs of splashes were taken in the course of his experiments were regarded, at the time, as triumphs of the art. He was President of the Devonshire Association when it met at Tavistock in 1914, and took a keen interest in the proceedings of that body, as, indeed, he did in all movements for the encouragement of study and research. He received the C.B. in 1906.
Professor Worthington was in many ways a more remarkable man than the bare facts of his scientific career might suggest. A thorough public-school man, he was a living vindication of the public schools against the charge of suppressing originality and individual character. At Oxford he threw himself into the central life of his college, and was a member of the Trinity cricket eleven. In all his subsequent career, outdoor life was his great delight. Of books, and especially poetry, he was a discriminating lover. In him science has lost an ardent and penetrating mind, but England has lost a typically English character, a great and a chivalrous gentleman.
He died at Oxford on the 5th December, 1916, at the age of 64, and was buried at Littleham on the 12th December, 1916.