6 EDWARD WILLIAMS MORLEY— CLARKE 



philosophy from Wooster, and of doctor of science from Yale. He was an honorary member 

 of the Chemical Society of London, of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the only 

 American honorary member of the American Chemical Society. Of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science he was a corresponding member. 



He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he had served as president of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science and also of the American Chemical 

 Society. He also held membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Amer- 

 ican Philosophical Society, the Washington Academy of Sciences, the Astronomical and Astro- 

 physical Society of America, the German Chemical Society, and the French Physical Society. 

 He was honorary president of the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry. 



Morley was an extremely versatile man and had many interests apart from his devotion 

 to science. His early training was unusually broad, although as an investigator he was self- 

 trained. In his college days he was much interested in philosophy as taught by the famous 

 president of the college, Mark Hopkins. He was well read in general literature and a good 

 amateur musician. In his manuscript memoranda he says that in boyhood he was so fond of 

 music that he used to practice four hours a day, except on holidays, when eight hours could be 

 used in the same manner. "It was, " he says, " a severe trial when professional studies brought 

 devotion to music to an end." For a few years after stopping daily practice, some enjoyment of 

 his own performance on the piano was possible. For a good many more years he could enjoy 

 performing on a cabinet organ. Then he had to await the improvement of the player piano up 

 to the point where the performance was satisfactory. He neglects, however, to add that for a 

 while he played the organ in the college chapel at Hudson. One of his last acts was to give a 

 fund of $5,000 to the Congregational Church in Hartford in memory of his wife, whose death 

 preceded his by only a few months. This money was for the purchase of an organ and in aid 

 of the musical part of the church service. Morley was a religious man, but by no means bigoted 

 or fanatical. In my more than 40 years' personal acquaintance with him I never heard him refer 

 to his theological beliefs. 



Morley's life at West Hartford was quiet and uneventful. In a letter to his college class- 

 mates, reproduced by Professor Tower, Morley says : 



•In 1906, after teaching just forty years, I retired, hoping by timely rest from hard work to retain a fair degree 

 of health and good spirits and power of enjoyment. I built a house and a small laboratory in West Hartford, 

 and we are living there, seeming to find as much enjoyment as at any time in our lives. I grow a good many 

 gladioli and use the camera. Walking and bicycling, which are a great delight, are now somewhat too strenuous; 

 it is six years since I walked from North Adams over Greylock to Adams and took several similar walks in 

 Berkshire County. Now the valleys of Berkshire must content me. My eyesight is still good; I wrote the 

 Lord's prayer within the space covered by a three-cent piece a few months ago, without any magnifying glass. 

 My hearing is not so good. 



In this letter Morley fails to mention the pleasure he found in trips in his automobile, which 

 he drove himself. Much lovely scenery was easily within his reach. Only the summer before 

 he died he and Mrs. Morley took a long ride in his machine through northern Massachusetts 

 into southern Vermont. 



Professor Morley was a very modest man and by no means given to self-advertising. 

 Consequently he was little known outside of scientific circles, but among chemists and physicists 

 his reputation was world-wide. In his social relations he was rather diffident and made acquaint- 

 ances slowly. But among his friends he was most companionable. Professor Tower says of 

 him that he had — 



a remarkably retentive mind, so that practically everything that he read was stored in his memory, whence it 

 could be drawn whenever needed. He not only possessed great clarity of expression in writing and speaking, 

 but, what is rarer, he had the ability to present scientific and abstruse matters in a manner which made them 

 interesting to laymen. His public lectures on such subjects as the ether-drift experiments were always well 

 attended, and he held the attention of his audiences to the end. 



Morley died, following a surgical operation, in the Hartford Hospital, at the ripe age of 85 

 years. He and his wife were both buried in the family plot at Pittsfield, the city in which his 

 parents had passed their declining years. If his epitaph could be written in one word, that word 

 might well be "Thorough." 



The following bibliography was compiled by Professor Tower, the successor of Morley in 

 the chair of chemistry at Adelbert College. 



