In view of his delicate health and his promise as a scientist, Oxford allowed Merton to go straight to a research thesis without taking his final exams; this was an unusual privilege. His investigation of the properties of solutions of caesium nitrate earned him a BSc in 1910. Meanwhile, he had been reading widely and conceived many ideas for improving the techniques of spectroscopy. While still a schoolboy he had set up a room in his father's house as a primitive laboratory.