ABSTRACT
Liveing had long had an interest in spectroscopy. His colleague and obituarist, Charles Heycock, tells us that as a student Liveing attended lectures on physical optics and was the only member of the class to take up the lecturer's offer to demonstrate, after the lecture, the black absorption lines in a spectrum. 1 Before Dewar's arrival in Cambridge Liveing gave occasional courses on ‘Spectroscopic Analysis’. 2 He had, however, at that time shown little interest in research and none in spectroscopic research. It was also a new subject for Dewar, who may have been looking for a more systematic field of research to replace the almost random set of topics that he had tackled in Edinburgh. The two men soon were soon on good terms in spite of what Heycock said of their ‘widely different temperaments and widely different ideals’ and of both being ‘quick-tempered’. In 1884 Dewar, Liveing and the younger William Ramsay were on their way to the BAAS meeting in Montreal when Ramsay assessed Liveing as ‘a nice old boy but not much of a chemist, as I should judge from conversation’. 3 Dewar's assessment was that Liveing's contribution to their joint work was ‘thorough and trustworthy rather than original’. 4
