THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



2§5 



gifts of millionaires. But the people 

 are ready to maintain their univer- 

 sities. Wisconsin has this year appro- 

 priated $725,000 for its university; 

 Virginia would in the end do more for 

 its university than will ever be done 

 by distant millionaires. It seems a 

 pity that some of the complications in- 

 evitable in an imperfect democracy and 

 the temporary backwardness of the 

 south in appreciation of educational 

 matters as compared with the central 

 and western states have led the Univer- 

 sity of Virginia to diverge in the di- 

 rection of our private eastern institu- 

 tions instead of maintaining intact the 

 democratic ideals of its founder. 



PROFESSOR CHARLES A. YOUNG. 



The retirement of Professor Charles 

 Augustus Young from the active duties 

 of the chair of astronomy and of the 

 directorship of the Halstead Observa- 

 tory at Princeton deserves more than 

 a passing comment as a news item in 

 this journal. A service of science for 

 a period of more than fifty years in 

 itself commands respectful attention; 

 and the manner in which this service 

 has been rendered, with lofty regard 

 for truth and genuine interest in its 

 diffusion, is almost unique in this gen- 

 eration. 



He was to the manor born, for his 

 grandfather, Ebenezer Adams, was pro- 

 fessor of mathematics and natural phi- 

 losophy at Dartmouth from 1810 to 

 1833. His father, Ira Young, succeed- 

 ed Ebenezer in the chair and occupied 

 it with distinction until his death in 

 1S58. Charles Augustus, born at Han- 

 over, on December 15, 1834, was gradu- 

 ated as bachelor of arts from the col- 

 lege of his fathers in 1853. He made 

 his first visit to Europe in that year, 

 accompanying his father, who went to 

 purchase instruments for the Shattuck 

 Observatory then in process of erection 

 at Hanover. The notebooks of the ob- 

 servatory contain many of the son's 

 observations recorded during his un- 

 dergraduate days. After two years 



spent in teaching the classics at 

 Phillips' Andover, with simultaneous 

 studies in the theological seminary, 

 Charles Young went in 1857 to Hudson, 

 to become professor of mathematics and 

 natural philosophy at the Western Re- 

 serve College. During several sum- 

 mers he served as astronomical as- 

 sistant on the government's lake sur- 

 vey. During 1862 he left his books at 

 the call of patriotism, and assumed for 

 some months the captaincy of a regi- 

 ment of Ohio volunteers, largely com- 

 posed of students. 



He returned to Dartmouth in 1866, 

 to the professorship of natural phi- 

 losophy and astronomy formerly held 

 by his father. It is fortunate that 

 laboratory instruction was not then 

 included in the teaching of natural 

 philosophy, for otherwise time could 

 hardly have been secured for the re- 

 searches in astrophysics to which Pro- 

 fessor Young's attention was enthusi- 

 astically given in the hours not spent 

 in the class room. The significance of 

 the spectroscope was clearly foreseen 

 by him, and he devoted much time to 

 its development. 



At the total solar eclipse of 1S69, 

 he observed the spectrum of the corona. 

 He looked for, but did not see, the re- 

 versal of the dark Fraunhofer lines 

 at the instant of internal tangency of 

 moon and sun. But in the following 

 year, at a station in Spain, his expecta- 

 tions were realized in his detection of 

 the ' flash spectrum.' This difficult 

 visual observation was not photograph- 

 ically confirmed until the eclipse of 

 1896, when Mr. W. Shackleton, of Sir 

 Norman Lockyer's party, obtained a 

 fairly good plate; and in 1898 Sir 

 Norman and others obtained very fine 

 photographs of the elusive phenomenon. 

 In the early seventies, Professor 

 Young assiduously observed the solar 

 prominences and the spectrum of the 

 chromosphere. He obtained in 1870 

 the first photographic record of a solar 

 prominence, but the lack of sensitive- 

 ness of the wet-plates then in use made 



