SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



471 



by a committee of which Professor 

 Ames was the responsible member, and 

 the Dublin University Press has pub- 

 lished the 'Scientific Writings' of 

 FitzGcrald, edited by Dr. Joseph Lar- 

 mor. These memorial volumes should 

 be in the hands of many who are not 

 physicists by profession. It is true 

 that some of the papers contain mathe- 

 matical formulas and technical state- 

 ments not comprehensible to those 

 without special training. But each 

 volume also includes a number of mas- 

 terly addresses revealing the progress 



teur in character, incidental to more 

 absorbing activities; and Kumford's 

 work can scarcely be credited to Amer- 

 ica. Henry's investigations were also 

 fundamental, but they were in large 

 measure fragmentary and unpublished. 

 jNIayer's ingenious experiments can 

 scarcely be regarded as of great im- 

 portance. Rowland may thus be re- 

 garded as the greatest experimental 

 physicist that America has produced. 

 He himself attributed our lack of 

 productivity in pure physics to the 

 counter attraction of invention and 



Professor Rowland's Dividing Engine. 



of physical science, and the researches 

 give an excellent introduction to the 

 fundamental concepts of modern phys- 

 ics. They show science in the making 

 in a way that is in many respects 

 more attractive than a systematic 

 treatise. 



Rowland was by common consent the 

 leading experimental physicist of his 

 generation in this country. In one of 

 his addresses he could only mention 

 four American physicists of note — | 

 Franklin, Rumford, Henry and ]Mayer. 

 Fundamental as the work of Franklin 

 and Rumford proved to be in the his- 

 tory of science, it was in a way ama- 



money-making ; and in one of his ad- 

 dresses spoke very bitterly of the uni- 

 versity professor who prostituted his 

 chair to such uses. It is, however, not 

 clear Avhy a group of able inventors 

 and experts should not lead to pure 

 science as well as away from it. Row- 

 land himself patented important inven- 

 tions, as his application of alternating 

 currents to rapid telegraphy, and acted 

 as expert for engineering enterprises, 

 as the electrical development at Ni- 

 agara Falls. 



Rowland's researches fall into three 

 main groups — magnetism and elec- 

 tricity,- heat and light — and in each 



