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Dr Bill Jenkins, Historian, Honorary research fellow at the University of St Andrews

 

A surprising number of professors occupying chairs at the Scottish universities in the nineteenth century had been able to rise from modest backgrounds. This case study will examine how one such academic, John Leslie (1766–1832), the son of a joiner and cabinetmaker, could become first professor of mathematics (1805–19) and then professor of natural philosophy (1819–32) at the University of Edinburgh.

John Leslie was born in Largo, Fife, on 16 April 1766. As Macvey Napier wrote in his Memoir of Leslie, he was ‘the son of humble, but in their line of life, highly respectable parents’. He was the youngest child of Robert Leslie and Anne Carstairs, both natives of Fife. Leslie attended three local schools during his childhood, but only for a total of around one year. This was the limit of his ‘formal’ education before matriculating at the University of St Andrews in 1779.

The first of these schools, to which he was sent at the age of four, was what was known as a ‘dame school’, run by an elderly lady who ‘plied her [spinning] wheel whilst teaching the alphabet’. After being ousted from his favoured spot by the fire to make way for a new pupil, he refused to go back and was sent to a second school where he learned writing and arithmetic. He lasted there six months before moving on to a third school which taught Latin. His dislike of the language and the long walk to school led his parents to take him out of this school after only six weeks.

Perhaps more important than his brief spells of formal education was the informal education he received from his father and eldest brother, who taught him the elements of mathematics at home. They were the first in a series of mentors who encouraged Leslie’s interest in mathematics. The next was Spence Oliphant, who became minister of Largo when Leslie was eleven or twelve years old. Impressed by the boy’s knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy, Oliphant lent him books and encouraged him to learn Latin, knowledge of which was the only formal requirement for study at Scotland’s universities in this period.

Oliphant also encouraged him to enrol at the University of St Andrews to study mathematics under Professor Nicholas Vilant at the age of thirteen. Vilant was so impressed by Leslie’s knowledge that he advanced him straight to the senior class, where he won that year’s class prize. Leslie’s evident talents attracted the attention of the chancellor of the University, Thomas Hay, eighth earl of Kinnoul, who paid for his education on condition he should enter the church afterwards. It was during his time at St Andrews that he became acquainted with John Playfair, then minister of Liff in Forfarshire, who was also to become an important mentor to Leslie later in his career.

In 1785 he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh to study divinity. However, he devoted most of his attention to mathematics and the natural sciences. Shortly after Leslie’s arrivel in Edinburgh, Hay died, freeing him from his obligation to enter the church after graduation, a prospect that did not fill his heart with joy in any case. This was the golden age of the University of Edinburgh, and he was able to attend the classes of such luminaries as John Robison, Joseph Black, Dugald Stewart, Alexander Munro secundus, as well as his old friend John Playfair, now professor of mathematics at Edinburgh. He also met Adam Smith, who helped him support himself by hiring him to tutor his relative and heir, David Douglas. As was common for impecunious students at this time, he also tutored several other students to pay for his own studies. In 1788 Playfair communicated a paper by Leslie to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, helping him to establish his reputation among the intellectual circles of the Scottish capital.

Image: Portrait of John Leslie by Ambroise Tardieu, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6721825)

In 1788, with the support of Playfair and Robison, he secured the job of tutoring a fellow student, Thomas Randolph, in Virginia. On his return from America he moved to London where he endeavoured to support himself by lecturing and tutoring in natural philosophy, without any great success, despite the continuing support of his Scottish patrons. From 1790 his situation gradually improved, and he was able to support himself through editorial and translation work, as well as tutoring Thomas Wedgewood of the famous Staffordshire pottery dynasty, who had been a fellow student at Edinburgh.

In 1792 he returned to his home town of Largo where he supported himself by writing for the Monthly Review while applying for academic posts. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the chairs of natural philosophy at both St Andrews and Glasgow Universities. His not entirely underserved reputation as an extreme Whig in politics and a religious free-thinker contributed significantly to his failure.

In 1797 his friend Thomas Wedgewood settled an annuity of £150 on him for life, giving him some degree of financial security and taking off the pressure to find a career to support himself to a considerable extent. He used this independence well and published a series of papers and a book, Experimental Enquiries into the Nature and Properties of Heat (1804). The latter won him the prestigious Rumford prize from the Royal Society of London, which greatly augmented his scientific reputation.

Perhaps surprisingly, it was to be a footnote in his magnum opus on heat that was to be used in the following year by those who opposed his candidacy for the chair of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh as their most effective ammunition in their campaign against him. He had already in 1804 failed for a second time to gain the chair of natural philosophy at the deeply conservative University of St Andrews, when the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh became open when his friend John Playfair moved over to the chair of natural philosophy on the death of John Robison. (Leslie had also put himself forward as a candidate for the chair of natural philosophy, but could not compete with Playfair).

His candidacy for the Edinburgh chair of mathematics was violently opposed by the Moderate Party among the Edinburgh ministers of the Church of Scotland, who favoured their own candidate, the Edinburgh minister Thomas MacKnight. MacKnight’s scientific reputation was modest in comparison to Leslie’s and his intention to retain his clerical living if he gained the professorship was controversial. The Moderates were determined to have their man elected and searched around for ammunition to blacken Leslie’s name. They quickly found what they were looking for. Leslie had included a note in his Experimental Enquiries in which he praised the theory of causality of the controversial sceptical philosopher David Hume. The Moderates used this to challenge his election by painting him as an atheist and therefore unsuitable for the post. Fortunately for Leslie, their opposition was of no avail, and he was duly elected, supported by influential Whigs within the university and the Moderate’s Evangelical opponents in the Church.

In 1819 the death of his friend John Playfair left the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh vacant. Physics had always been Leslie’s first love and his now firmly established scientific reputation meant that he was elected to the chair without serious opposition. He became well known for the spectacular demonstrations he performed during his classes, which added greatly to their popularity with students. He performed many of them for King George IV when he visited Edinburgh in 1822. Leslie was to occupy this chair until his death in 1832 at the age of sixty-seven.

Leslie’s ability to rise from an artisanal background to become a distinguished professor at the University of Edinburgh probably owed less to his extremely brief formal education than to the influence and teaching of his autodidact father and brother and a series of mentors who saw the young Leslie’s potential and supported him financially, morally and practically. Without the positive intervention of these individuals, it is unlikely that Leslie’s talents would ever have been recognised. This is not to say that he did not have to struggle to achieve his goal, and his own determination and perseverance played a big part in his eventual success.