University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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PROFESSOR FRANCIS H. SMITH

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i3 ORTUNATE indeed was the man who could enter upon the pursuit of I physical science in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was the most opportune moment in the history of thought for a scientist to go into the laboratory. He then stood at the beginning of the mightiest revolution in the Mt spirit, method and results of investigation into natureis processes which man- ' kind has ever witnessed. ttThe Vestiges 0f Creationi'w-the first streak in the dawn of the new day-appeared in 1844, when Francis H, Smith was a student in , the Leesburg Academy. Herbert Spencefs iirst important work, 8Social Stat- j' icsf, was published in 1850, while Mr. Smith was studying under William B. Rogers, at the University of Virginia. Five years after he had succeeded his ' ' f Natural Philosophy in that institution, the twin b . ' Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace on the 8Origin 1858, before the Linnaean Society in London. Object a significance never the whole world in the f scientific men, trans- : of Species, was read July 1st, '5 The sun had burst upon the horizon giving to every discerned. before. A quenchless impulse to re-examine light of this new principle of growth took posession 0 ported with joy by the discovery of nature's creative secret. Yet was the mind of a scientist ever put to a severer test than in being re- quired to bridge the period from 1853 to, the present time? Think of the crucial readjustment in the conception as to the shape of the earth Of a man who was living at the time of Columbus, voyage to a world in the west! Imagine the mental shock which men must have felt who. read for the first time, in 1543, the state- ment of Copernicus that this planet is an atom and that the sun is the center of our system! In a moment those. men traversed milleniums of mental experience. It was to such a test that Professor Smith has been subjected. He has kept, i . steadily 0n the way, his strength proving equal to the beating heat of the noon- day. This feat is the highest proof of his mindis elasticity and sanity. Profese W sor Smithis career has attested the truth of the maxim: 8There is nothing so '. . . V . conservative as progress. When uThe Vestiges of Creation came from the press the critics of that time charged R obert Chambers with 8poisoning the