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in this part of London, for many of the illustrious founders of 

 our modern science have lived and flourished in the district. 



To give only a few examples, Cavendish, the discoverer of 

 the composition of water, had his house, which still stands, 

 at the corner of Bedford Square, and a succession of famous 

 chemists, Graham, Williamson, and Ramsay, have done the 

 greater part of their life's work at University College, which 

 stands within the charmed boundaries of Bloomsbury. 



It is, therefore, without great surprise that one learns that 

 Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe was born in Bloomsbury, at 10, Powis 

 Place, Great Ormond Street, and that the late Prof. Raphael 

 Meldola spent the latter portion of his days, and finally died at 

 6, Brunswick Square, London, W.C. 



The two volumes on Sir Henry Roscoe and Prof. Meldola 

 respectively are a small tribute to the memory of these two 

 great scientists — great both as chemists and as public men — 

 to commemorate their varied activities and to remind posterity 

 of the debt it owes to them. The books are of slightly different 

 character, inasmuch as the work by Sir Edward Thorpe is of 

 the nature of a short biographical sketch of Sir Henry Roscoe's 

 life, whilst the other, written by various hands, is rather more 

 of a series of short appreciations by the various writers of special 

 phases of Prof. Meldola's life, together with a bibliography of 

 the published articles written by him. 



It is not proposed to deal here with the accounts given of 

 the purely scientific labours of Roscoe and Meldola, which are 

 too well known to need detailed description ; one has only to 

 recall on the one hand the researches of Roscoe on spectrum 

 analysis, on vanadium, or on the composition of constant- 

 boiling mixtures, or his text-book of chemistry, and on the 

 other hand Meldola's work on coal-tar derivatives, and more 

 particularly on dyes, to realise how deeply laid are the results 

 of their labours in the structure of modern chemistry. Both 

 men, though in some respects of very different type, had this 

 in common, a keen delight in the acquisition of new know- 

 ledge and experience from whatever direction it came ; both, 

 for instance were greatly interested in astronomy, and in each 

 case, curiously enough, made a voyage abroad to assist in 

 observing an eclipse of the sun, Meldola in 1875 and Roscoe 

 in 1870, the latter suffering shipwreck on the voyage, though 

 fortunately without disastrous results. 

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