124 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



trum " ( Uritersuchungen iiber das Sonnenspectrum), was, almost 

 immediately after its appearance, republished in an English 

 translation. To these works, and the papers on radiation, partly- 

 mathematical and partly experimental, published in 1859 and 

 1860, which led up to the great work on the solar spectrum, he 

 has added, so far as Prof. Tait has been able to discover, only 

 three or four more recent papers, among which are one on the 

 change of form which an elastic solid undergoes when it is mag- 

 netically or electrically polarized {Berlin Ahhandlungen, 1884) ; 

 a subsequent paper giving applications of the results in the 

 same investigation ; and additions to his paper on the distribu- 

 tion of electricity on two influencing spheres. 



Prof. Heller says that Kirchhoff possessed in an eminent de- 

 gree all the qualities most sought for in an academic teacher. 

 Mr. Helmholtz sees in him the prototype of a genuine German 

 investigator. The religion and object of his life was to seek the 

 truth in its purest form, and express it with quite abstract un- 

 selfishness. He loved and cultivated science for itself alone, and 

 deemed the slightest adornment or excursion from logical exact- 

 ness in presenting it to be a profanation ; while all mingling of 

 it with personal motives or with the strife for honors or gain 

 was most repugnant to him. As he acted in science, so did he in 

 life ; and what he recognized as a manly civic or ofl&cial duty 

 he pursued with logical thoroughness, divested of all personal 

 motive. Winning amiability and goodness of heart were re- 

 vealed in all of his personal intercourse, so that both in Heidel- 

 berg and Berlin he was one of the most popular of the academical 

 teachers. He was fond of telling a story of how, when the con- 

 versation turned upon the question whether the Fraunhofer 

 lines conveyed any information respecting the presence of gold 

 in the sun, his banker asked, " Of what use is gold in the sun to 

 me if I can not go and get it ? " Afterward, having received an 

 English gold medal for his discovery, he showed it to the banker, 

 and said, " See, I have got some gold from the sun ! " Having 

 been compelled by his growing disabilities to retire from active 

 life, Kirchhoff spent his last months with his family, preserving a 

 living interest in the questions with which he had been occupied. 

 He was never heard to utter a complaint, though he must have 

 known that his powers were steadily passing away. Death came to 

 him quite unexpectedly, while he was asleep, on October 17, 1887. 



As described by Prof. Heller, he was of a stature rather under 

 than above the average, with finely modeled, sharply cut feat- 

 ures ; having a high forehead, on which many years of contin- 

 uous thought had engraved close and deeply cut wrinkles, while 

 the penetrating glance of his deep-blue eyes bore witness to his 

 habit of giving close attention to abstract thought. 



