402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



father was, at the beginning of his career, a lawyer ; in due course 

 of time he rose to the position of judge of the Suj)reme Court of 

 Appeal, and has now been for a number of years a senator of the 

 free city of Hamburg. The childhood of Prof. Hertz was subject 

 to every pure, healthful, and elevating influence that a highly 

 capable father and a superior mother can exercise. Both of them 

 gave a great part of their time to their children ; their eldest boy 

 especially enjoyed the advantage of their companionship in many 

 a holiday's ramble through the green fields and woods, and in 

 cozy winter nights spent in reading Homer, the German classics, 

 and other books. 



In passing through the high-school classes of his native city, 

 his predilection for the study of natural science early asserted 

 itself. Whenever a new course of study began and a new text- 

 book was put into the hands of the class, the boy would devote 

 every leisure moment to the perusal of the volume, experimenting 

 frequently with apparatus made by himself, and never ceasing 

 until he could tell his father, " I have mastered that book." This 

 statement always proved to be perfectly correct. In spite of his 

 decided gift for natural science. Hertz chose as his vocation civil 

 engineering. But when, after completing his studies, he came 

 to take the first steps toward the practical execution of this de- 

 sign, he felt that his choice had been a mistake. His parents, 

 with a ready perception of the deeply rooted needs of his strong 

 and peculiar nature, whose desires they would not think of thwart- 

 ing, entered into his new idea, gave him their approval, and fur- 

 nished him with the necessary means. So he set out on a new 

 course of studies in mathematics and natural science. He gave 

 himself up to this work heart and soul, and for a number of years 

 knew no other object in life but unceasing and unrelenting hard 

 work. He studied physics at Munich and Berlin, and enjoyed the 

 warm regard of Prof. Helmholtz. In 1880 he became his assist- 

 ant, and, at his instigation, in 1883 settled down as a "Privat- 

 docent," or professor without salary at the University of Kiel. It 

 was from this time on that he made the science of electricity the 

 one great object of his researches, the main pursuit of his life. 

 The first years were filled with investigations relating to electric 

 discharges, etc. He busied himself, above all, with the new con- 

 ceptions of the inner mechanism of electric phenomena, and of 

 the connection between these and the phenomena of light and of 

 radiant heat. These conceptions, originating with Faraday and 

 Maxwell in England and represented in Germany by Helmholtz, 

 were now carried forward by Prof. Hertz. 



His reputation soon spread through his native country and he 

 was in 1885 called to the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe, which 

 for various reasons became very dear to him. One of its attrac- 



