GEORGE FREDERICK BARKER. M.D., Sc.D., LL.D. 



(Read May 5, igii.) 



When the present writer was asked to prepare a memorial notice 

 of Dr. George F. Barker, he felt some hesitancy, beheving that some 

 -other and closer friend would be better fitted to undertake it. Still, 

 there had grown to be a strong bond of friendship and sympathy 

 between Dr. Barker and himself, increasing with the flight of years. 

 Both began life as chemists, and both spent their earlier years in 

 teaching that science, while maintaining all along an unbroken inter- 

 est in its advance. Both were early trained in the mechanical work- 

 shop as constructors. Together, through many years, they wit- 

 nessed, and themselves assisted in, that great extension of electrical 

 science and its applications to the arts and industries, which have 

 so greatly changed the conduct and convenience of modern life. 

 Contemporaries they were, from its very inception. They were 

 fellow delegates to international congresses of electricians, fellow 

 members of several scientific and technical national societies, includ- 

 ing the American Philosophical Society. 



The writer may be pardoned for adding that in scientific tastes, 

 there was many a bond of sympathy between them. The great 

 advances in astro-physics, the researches in chemical physics, the 

 wonderful discoveries in Roentgen rays, and the later epoch-making 

 investigations in radio-activity, aroused in them a like interest. 

 Above all, the friendship that had existed for so many years was of 

 a. kind which time could but ripen and increase. Dr. Barker was 

 constant in his attendance on important scientific gatherings, and 

 active in their work, and when a year or so before his death he was 

 compelled to remain away owing to illness, his absence was at once 

 noticed and regretted. His cordial greeting so warmly given and 

 earnestly reciprocated was missed by his friends, who did not then 

 know that the end of a most useful life had almost come, and that 



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