The eldest son of a "gentleman farmer", Nichol was born near Brechin and educated there before proceeding to King's College in Aberdeen where he achieved honours in mathematics and physics. After ordination and a brief career as a minister, a change in his theological views saw him pursue a career in education.
He was headmaster of Hawick Grammar School and Cupar Academy and - from 1827 - rector of Montrose Academy. He resigned this post due to ill health, but in 1836 was appointed regius professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
He extended his work beyond the university, speaking about science to crowded public meetings in the city. His "The Architecture of the Heavens" was published in 1838, followed by "The Solar System" and various other works. He was twice married, and died in Rothesay.
JOHN PRINGLE NICHOL, eldest son of a gentleman farmer immigrant from Northumberland and Jane Forbes, of Ellon, was born in January, 1804, at Huntly-Hill, near Brechin, Forfarshire, and in the Grammar School of that town received the rudiments of his education. Originally destined for the Church, he proceeded on a bursary to the University of King's College, Aberdeen, where be obtained, in the departments of mathematics and physical science, the highest honours. His precocity as a teacher was evinced by his having, during one of the vacations, when only seventeen years of age, successfully filled a vacancy in the charge of the parish school at Dun. Having completed his Arts curriculum, he passed through the Divinity Hall, and was, before attaining his majority, licensed as a preacher. In this capacity Mr. Nichol appeared several times in the pulpit; but a change in his theological views led, shortly after his ordination, to his leaving the ministry, and giving himself up to the educational work to which, in one form or another, his life was devoted. Having been in succession Headmaster of the Hawick Grammar School, Editor of a liberal newspaper in Cupar-Fife, and Headmaster of Cupar Academy, he was in 1827 nominated Rector of Montrose Academy. While holding this office he, besides discharging its duties with marked fidelity, gave numerous public lectures, and became acquainted, through correspondence, with several distinguished compeers, among them conspicuously his life-long friend, J. S. Mill. In 1834 temporary ill health led to his resignation, and during the next two years, largely occupied with private studies in political and mental as well as physical science, he extended his sphere of lecturing, and at the close of this period delivered one of the earliest courses to the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh. About this time he was recommended by James Mill, the historian of India, and Nassau W. Senior to the Chair of Political Economy in the College de France, vacant by the death of M. Say, but circumstances led to his remaining in this country. In 1836 he was appointed, by the Crown, Regius Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow - an election which has some additional interest from the fact that Carlyle was among the competitors. The subject of astronomy being outside the course prescribed for the Degree in Arts, and none of the professions requiring any knowledge of it, the number regularly enrolled in the class was and has been very limited; but Mr. Nichol never held his chair as a sinecure: besides being a zealous observer of the stars and the climate, he was in the habit of giving free lectures to such students as chose to attend them, and all who showed any capacity for their voluntary work found in him not only an inspiring teacher, but a singularly practical guide. He took an almost fatherly interest in the distinguished alumni in all departments, and they had reason to acknowledge that of the happier influences of their Alma Mater on their minds and careers his was one of the most valuable. There was a charm in his manner and conversation which none could resist, and he surrounded himself with an atmosphere at once refining and bracing. With rarely rivalled tact he enlisted the sympathies, made himself acquainted with the conditions, and adapted himself to the favourite pursuits of every undergraduate with whom he came into personal contact. Deeply versed in various knowledge, not least in that of men and the common things of life, which usually counts for so little in collegiate routine, his native dignity so assured him of respect that he could afford to give full play to the kindly humour which was one of his most distinguishing features.
The influence of the new professor soon came to be felt beyond the walls of the University. Disregarding the prejudices apt unduly to restrict the range of academic activity, he went with his "faery tales of science" into the heart of the busy city and brought thousands under his spell. There are many who still remember the crowded hall in which they first "learned his great language, caught his clear accents," as the scene of their entrance into a world of thought of the very existence of which they had been ignorant. He combined, as few have done, the exactness and precision of a man of science with the power of an accomplished orator. Hence his lectures were works of art, calculated at once to exercise and enlighten the intellect, quicken the imagination, and move the heart. Beginning with a careful exordium in which he introduced his readers to the field of his discourse, it was his custom, when he had fairly enunciated his first proposition, to turn from the reading desk, and fronting his audience, to speak without book, and in conversational tone more fully to unfold the law he was announcing: often he would draw a diagram, or figure out a calculation on the board, holding fast the eyes and ears of the throng till, amid the applause which intimated he had made his point unmistakeable, he would, in measured sentences, gather up the results of his argument, and so advance to another stage or proposition to be similarly illustrated and explained. Thus the lecture proceeded, with alternations of lucid exposition and stirring appeal, through which it was evident that the seeming ease and calm of the speaker were but the covering of the suppressed excitement of a finely-strung organism, of an enthusiasm of science and humanity openly displayed in the thrilling perorations, the most striking of which might be compared with the eloquence of such masters of English prose as De Quincey or Ruskin. That the lecturer's magnetic influence was not wholly due to the grandeur of his theme, was manifested by the fact that when he spoke rather of minute processes than general results the attention was as close and the interest almost as keen as when he led his listeners into realms of illimitable space. Since the day when Chalmers delivered his sermons in the Tron Church no public speaker north of the Tweed had so enchained his hearers. One who was himself a most accomplished lecturer was wont to say that all that the people of Scotland knew of astronomy they had learnt from Thomas Chalmers and John Pringle Nichol.
As an author, the latter has established a reputation more lasting if less wide than that of a lecturer, and taken rank among interpreters of science at once popular and precise, as the predecessor of such men as Huxley and Tyndall. In 1838 "The Architecture of the Heavens" appeared, which, between that date and 1845, ran through seven editions, and soon after it "The Solar System." The testimony of a great novelist of our time may be fairly taken as representing the impression they left on minds equally inspired by a zeal for truth and a love for beauty. In 1841 "George Eliot" wrote - "I have been revelling in Nichol's 'Architecture of the Heavens' and 'Phenomena of the Solar System,' and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system, and from universe to universe, trying to conceive myself in such a position and with such a visual faculty as to enable me to enjoy what Young enumerates among the novelties of the stranger man when he bursts the shell to -
'Behold an infinite of floating worlds,
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage without port.'
'Hospitable infinity!' Nichol beautifully says. How should I love to have a thorough-going student with me that we might read together." The latter of the two works referred to, modified and republished under the title, "The Planetary System," was followed in 1846 by "The System of the World," then by another named "The Stellar Universe," and in 1855 by "The Planet Neptune," into which the author had expanded one of his most effective lectures. In the year 1849 almost the last efforts of the pencil of David Scott were devoted to a series of illustrations for the "Architecture of the Heavens." The ninth edition, in which they appear, has a unique attraction as the joint product of two men of a genius in some respects akin, but differently directed; for these final sketches of the great painter seem almost to endow with visible, though of necessity somewhat shadowy, form the "vague emotions of delight," "the yearnings toward the vault of night," awakened by the glowing paragraphs of the text.
Though Dr. Nichol's pre-eminent role was that of an expositor rather than an investigator, those qualified to judge have testified to his having had the gifts requisite for a practical astronomer of the first rank. He had the physical susceptibility to the "outward shows" of Nature which is equally a note of the discoverer as a portion of the poet, and his conscientious accuracy made it impossible for him to accept any conclusion he had not independently verified. He rendered a distinct service to science by the energy he displayed in being the main agent in the transference of the Observatory from its dingy surroundings in the back green of the old College to its site on the summit of Dowanhill, then far withdrawn from "the smoke and wealth and din" of the city, and in furnishing it with all the newest instruments and appliances (to secure which he made in 1840 a special trip to Munich) for astronomical and meteorological research. But - graces of expression apart - his characteristic lay less in absolute originality than in a fertility of resource, comparable to that so prominently displayed by his illustrious contemporary, Sir William Rowan Hamilton. His forte was astronomy, his more than foible universality. His last complete work was a "Dictionary of the Physical Sciences," pronounced by the late Professor Macquorn Rankine to be "almost unparalleled for the extent and accuracy of the information that it contains in a small bulk." In his account of the "General Principles in Geology," which forms the preface to Keith Johnston's "Physical Atlas," he has condensed the result of years of theoretic and practical study and exhibited his unfailing powers of making his view of a subject clear and attractive.
Professor Nichol did not limit himself either as a public speaker or as a writer to the themes which he had made peculiarly his own. His interest in Metaphysics was only less than his authority in Physics. Thoroughly versed in all the phases and disputes of Scotch philosophy, he was as familiar with the speculations of the Continent as was possible for a master of Latin and French imperfectly acquainted with German. His contributions to Griffin's "Cyclopaedia of Biography" embrace so wide a range of names as to form a brief summary of the history of modern mental science. At the time of his death, he was engaged as one of the editors of Mackenzie's "Biographical Dictionary," all the articles in the department of physical science passing under his supervision, and many of them being from his pen.
He was also the author of numerous, frequently anonymous, papers on literary and social subjects, scattered among periodicals. In 1848-49 he passed a winter and delivered several courses of lectures in the United States, and on his return gave a graphic account of his impressions of the new civilization of the West. The task of collecting and condensing these into a substantial volume was undertaken and begun, but left unfinished. Among many public questions engaging his special interest the two in connection with which he most frequently appeared on the platform were education and the cause of the oppressed nationalities. In 1847 he translated, and introduced by a long elaborate essay, Willm's "Education of the People." During the long years in which legislation was delayed by the resistance of vested rights and ecclesiastical privilege he was the unwearied advocate of national and absolutely unsectarian schools; and though he passed away before his and like pleading partially prevailed, it is unquestionable that he was one of those to whom the country owes its gratitude for the Act which is now being administered. His speeches on this subject, as well as those delivered by the side of Louis Kossuth in denunciation of Louis Napoleon and the tyranny of the House of Hapsburg, in support of a policy that recognized the claims of justice above seeming expediency, are still memorable to those who heard them. In 1852 he published his "Memorials from Ben Rhydding," being artistic reminiscences of a summer spent in the valley of Wharfe. Dr. Nichol's mind passed through some of the changes common in our transition age. In his early years a Radical, as the term was then understood, he latterly inclined to what has been called Liberal-Conservativism, his ideal of an English statesman being more nearly represented by Lord Palmerston than by either Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli. Inspired, as is everywhere apparent in his works, by a deep spirit of reverence, he was in his later days more and more sceptical as to definite doctrines. In Church politics he favoured Establishments as in his opinion tending to greater catholicity.
Professor Nichol, at a comparatively early stage of his career, was offered - practically by Sir Robert Peel - the honour of knighthood, but declined to accept it. In 1837 he received the degree of LL.D. from his own University. In 1857 a deputation from the Liberal party in Glasgow failed to persuade him to solicit the suffrages of his fellow-citizens for a seat in Parliament, and he threw his weight in favour of Mr. Walter Buchanan. No notice of the subject of our sketch should omit some reference to the large-hearted hospitality he dispensed in the beautiful home attached to the new Observatory. When any distinguished guest was with him the generous host was accustomed to share the pleasures and honours of his stay with troops of friends. Under his roof, struggling students and unrecognized litterateurs met, on many an afternoon or evening they are not likely to forget, on outwardly equal terms with men grown grey in learning or in fame. "La carriere aux talents" was, with all due deference to the usages of society and the respects justly awarded to merit proved by time, their entertainer's motto and practice.
Dr. Nichol, who died at Rothesay in 1859, at the age of fifty-five, was twice married. His first wife was Miss Tullis of Auchmuty, Fifeshire, eldest daughter of the proprietor of the "Fife Herald," in the old columns of which are buried his first political essays. His second, who survives him, and is honoured for her philanthropy, was Miss Pease of Darlington. His two children, both of his first marriage, are now associated with the University of which he was so long an ornament. His son has for twenty-three years occupied the chair of English Literature; his daughter is the wife of the present Professor of Mathematics.
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