While in school in Greenock, John Galt formed a friendship with two other boys, a friendship which lasted for many years. One of these boys was William Spence, son of a Greenock coppersmith, who from an early age showed a great interest in mathematics and science. He was also a musician, as Galt writes in his Autobiography (Volume I), he encouraged Galt to learn to play the flute. Galt writes of Spence - “Spence, besides being a most delicious performer was a considerable composer, and made beautiful sonatas, which had as much character as the compositions of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.”
While young men in Greenock, Galt together James Park, William Spence formed a “monthly society” where the read various publications and wrote their own contributions. Galt writes - “The essays of William Spence were very astronomical, we thought them profound; they were all about planets and comets, the cosmogony of the earth, the infinite divisibility of matter, and the boundless nature of premundane space; any thing of this world was too gross to enter into his speculative theories.”
While the three young men went their separate ways as far as their careers were concerned, Park and Spence visited John Galt shortly after he moved to London.
William Spence died in 1815 at the age of 37. In 1819 his mathematical essays were edited by John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871). Galt wrote a biography of Spence for this publication.
In his Biography of Spence, Galt described him – “His manners also were no less peculiar and
his staidness was so remarkable, even before he became a mathematician, that
about the age of fourteen he obtained from his companions the title of the
Philosopher; and this title, although certainly not intended as a mark of
respect, was undoubtedly bestowed from a sentiment of that kind mingled with
something in ridicule of his constitutional gravity.”
He was so well regarded in his hometown of Greenock that a subscription was raised to mark his life with a memorial in the Wellpark Mid Kirk, Greenock. This was widely encouraged by John Galt.
