308 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of working with minute quantities were tested to the utmost. In his research on 

 radium emanation he obtained after two months' work about as much of the gas 

 as would fill a hollow pin's head, yet this sufficed in his hands to prove that helium 

 is produced from radium. 



As a teacher Sir William enjoyed the greatest popularity, and his keen per- 

 ception, cleverness, and genial temperament made it a very great pleasure for 

 those who were fortunate enough to work under him. 



During the last few years he realised how dangerously careless, unscientific, 

 and inefficient was the national treatment of many vital matters, such as the 

 position of science, the utilisation of the national coal resources, and the like, and 

 he did yeoman service in bringing the matter before the public notice. 



One of his last public actions was the campaign during the present war to force 

 the Government, ignorant alike of science as of the operations of modern warfare, 

 to declare contraband the cotton needed by the Germans for their propulsive 

 explosives. 



He was a linguist of a high order, and as a musician he frequently delighted 

 his friends by his performance on the violin, or occasionally at a college chemical 

 dinner by some humorous parody written and composed by himself. 



Prof. Ramsay was made a Knight Commander of the Bath in 1902, one of the 

 very few distinctions conferred on chemists in this country, and he was the recipient 

 of numerous orders from many Governments. British and foreign universities 

 conferred on him their degrees, whilst the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was also his. 



Unfortunately for the country he was stricken down in the midst of his 

 activities with a mortal sickness, and despite every care he gradually sank and 

 passed away at his home in Hazlemere, High Wycombe, on July 23, 1916. 



Alike as a chemist and a patriot he deserved well of his country, and his name 

 will be a source of inspiration for many a generation to come. 



Frederick A. Mason. 



&ie Metchnikoff (C. H. O'Donoghue, D.Sc, F.Z.S.) 



Scientists the world over heard with deep regret that Elie Metchnikoff died 

 on July 15, at the age of seventy-one. In him they have lost an outstanding 

 figure in which great simplicity and charm of personality were combined with 

 untiring industry and extraordinary intellectual powers. 



Elias Mecznikow was born in the Russian province of Kharkoff in 1845. His 

 father, of an old Moldavian family, attained some eminence in the Russian army 

 and when he retired from the Imperial Guard was holding the rank of major- 

 general. To his mother, who was of Jewish extraction he appears to owe much 

 of his wonderful mental equipment. He entered the university of his province 

 at the age of seventeen and two years later graduated, having by this time already 

 published two papers, one on Vorticella and the other on Diplogaster. After 

 graduation and a short stay in the then British colony of Heligoland he went to 

 study with Leuckart first in Giessen and then in Gottingen. Little is to be 

 gained by quoting in extenso a list of his published works, though it is a very 

 impressive and formidable one, but it is interesting to note the general trend of 

 his studies. His first work, as has been noted, was on what may be described as 

 general invertebrate zoology. We soon find, however, particularly during a stay 

 in Naples, that he gradually transferred to invertebrate embryology. He married 

 his first wife in 1868 and two years later he was appointed professor ordinarius in 

 the University of Odessa, and three years after that he lost his first wife, who died 

 of pulmonary tuberculosis. In 1875 ne married again a young and accomplished 







