120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



parts of a visible order. Religion does not tell us of their inter- 

 relations ; science can not speak of their relation to God. Yet 

 the religious view of the world is infinitely deepened and en- 

 riched when we not only recognize it as the work of God, but 

 are able to trace the relation of part to part — to follow, if we 

 may say it reverently, the steps by which God worked, to elimi- 

 nate, so far as possible, from the action of Him, " with whom 

 is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," all that is arbi- 

 trary, capricious, unreasonable, and even where as yet we can 

 not explain, to go on in faith and hope. — Tlie Guardian. 



SKETCH OF GUSTAV ROBERT KIRCHHOFF. 



THE history of physics in our century is not poor in eminent 

 thinkers and great investigators ; but it is safe to predict, 

 as Prof. August Heller remarks, that when the student of a 

 future age takes his perspective view of the achieved results of 

 our contemporary research, he will pronounce Kirchhoff one of 

 the greatest of them all. Yet, although his works have made 

 his name immortal, and must cause it always to be in mind 

 where physics is taught, so simple and modest was he as he is 

 presented to us in Robert von Helmholtz's delineation of him, 

 that his person is quite hidden behind the science to which he 

 devoted his life ; and that few, except fellow-laborers in the same 

 lines and those who were so happy as to have had close rela- 

 tions with him, are aware of the extent and importance of his 

 labors outside of the field of spectrum analysis. 



GusTAV Robert Kirchhoff was born — the son of counselor- 

 at-law Kirchhoff — at Konigsberg, Prussia, March 12, 1834. Hav- 

 ing passed the course of the Kneiphof Gymnasium, he continued 

 his studies at the Albertina in his native city, under Neumann 

 in physics, and Julius Richelot in mathematics ; and there, in 

 his eighteenth year, decided that physics was the branch that 

 pressed the strongest claims upon his attention. It was a period 

 of rapid progress and important discoveries in science. Mayer 

 had published his first paper concerning the forces of inanimate 

 Nature, on the eve of the working out by several independent 

 observers of the law of correlation and conservation ; the undu- 

 latory theory of light had been established, but its mathematical 

 conditions and its adjustment to facts remained to be worked 

 out ; and the wonderful properties and powers of electricity were 

 under investigation by students at different centers, whose names 

 have since become identified with various aspects of electrical 

 theory. Kirchhoff, now entering upon the study of these same 



