In the same year in which the British Association
held its first meeting, Brewster received the honour of knighthood and the
decoration of the Guelphic order of Hanover. In 1838 he was appointed
principal of the united colleges of St Salvator and St Leonard, St Andrews.
In 1849 he acted as president of the British Association and was elected
one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France in
succession to J.J. Berzelius; and ten years later he accepted the office of
principal of the university of Edinburgh, the duties of which he discharged
until within a few months of his death, which took place at Allerly,
Melrose, on the 10th of February 1868.

In estimating Brewster's place among scientific discoverers the chief thing
to be borne in mind is that the bent of his genius was not
characteristically mathematical. His method was empirical, and the laws
which he established were generally the result of repeated experiment. To
the ultimate explanation of the phenomena with which he dealt he
contributed nothing, and it is noteworthy in this connexion that if he did
not maintain to the end of his life the corpuscular theory he never
explicitly adopted the undulatory theory of light. Few will be inclined to
dispute the verdict of Forbes:--"His scientific glory is different in kind
from that of Young and Fresnel; but the discoverer of the law of
polarization of biaxial crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double
refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the
intellectual history of the age." In addition to the various works of
Brewster already noticed, the following may be mentioned:--Notes and
Introduction to Carlyle's translation of Legendre's _Elements of Geometry_
(1824); _Treatise on Optics_ (1831); _Letters on Natural Magic,_ addressed
to Sir Walter Scott (1831); _The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of
Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler_ (1841); _More Worlds than One_ (1854).

See _The Home Life of Sir David Brewster,_ by his daughter Mrs Gordon.

BREWSTER, WILLIAM (c. 1566-1644), American colonist, one of the leaders of
the "Pilgrims," was born at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, England, about
1566. After studying for a short time at Cambridge, he was from 1584 to
1587 in the service of William Davison (? 1541-1608), who in 1585 went to
the Low Countries to negotiate an alliance with the states-general and in
1586 became assistant to Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's secretary of state.