David Brewster (1781-1868) went to the University of Edinburgh from Jedburgh, at the age of twelve. In 1813 he presented his paper to the Royal Society on various scientific instruments, and on the evidence of 200 substances that can refract, or disperse light. As a result, he was welcomed into the fellowship of this society a few years later. During his life he won many top awards for his work in science. He invented the kaleidoscope and helped improve the stereoscope, but he is especially remembered for his work in optics, in which he discovered what became known as Brewster’s Law. He demonstrated that “a beam of light can be split into reflected and refracted portions at right angles to each other, both beams retaining full polarization.”It was this discovery that was critical in the development of laser technology later.
Besides this, Brewster also collaborated with the English Christian, William Henry Fox Talbot, in the invention of the calotype process in 1841, which meant fixing photographic images to paper by using silver iodine. Talbot had sought to demonstrate that he had produced the first proper photographic images by using the “salted paper” method, five years before Daguerre had applied for his patent in 1839. After his calotype process had been patented, Brewster encouraged two fellow Edinburgh Christians, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, to produce the world’s first photographic portraits in 1843. By 1850 they based their studio at Rock House, Calton Hill.
Brewster worked with indefatigable energy to support the growth of empirical science, raising financial provision for struggling researchers, editing and writing in the science sections of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and co-founding the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in 1831 with fellow Christians, Revd Vernon Harcourt, Charles Babbage (Cambridge pioneer of the mechanical computer), William Whelwell, and James Finlay Weir Johnston, a Scottish Presbyterian and chemist who was sympathetic to the Free Church and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The agreed reason for the founding of the BAAS was to ensure that science moved forward using strict measures of empirical testing, and rejected pseudo-science. Furthermore, its founders were determined to see the Christian democratic model being introduced into science to prevent the well-to-do set dominating the field, as in the Royal Society, and to encourage and welcome good scientists, irrespective of their class status.
These Christian founders of the BAAS believed, as Babbage expressed it, “that the study of the works of nature with scientific precision, was a necessary and indispensable preparation to the understanding and interpreting their testimony of the wisdom and goodness of their Divine Author.” It was the BAAS that also hosted the famous debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley, over Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in 1860 at Oxford.
When the Free Church broke away from the Church of Scotland at the Disruption of 1843, Brewster joined the Free Church and was a licensed preacher. He would rise early to pray and study his Bible, believing that a thorough testing of all things with both Scripture and science, was vital. Brewster spoke of his certainty of Christ and thought “it can’t be presumption to be SURE [of our forgiveness] because it is Christ’s work, not ours; on the contrary, it is presumption to doubt His word and work.” Before he died, he reiterated his strong faith. “I shall see Jesus,” he said, “and that will be grand. I shall see Him who made the worlds.”
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) on the Disruption Painting in the Presbytery Hall of Edinburgh Theological Seminary. The painting was done by David Octavius Hill. It took 23 years to complete. Photo taken by Paul James-Griffiths, courtesy of ETS.