GEORGE HOWARD DARWIN. 863 



•and from 1897 to the time of his death Professor of the English 

 Language and Literature. He was a trustee of Bangor Seminary 

 from 1885, and President of the Board from 1887 until 1911. He was 

 trustee of the State Normal Schools from 1890 to 1913. He received 

 from Bowdoin College the degrees of D.D. in 1890, and LL.D. in 1908. 

 For forty-four years he taught in Bowdoin College with steadily 

 growing grasp of his subject and hold upon the affections of his stu- 

 dents. He loved good literature ; and had the magic power to impart 

 the love of it to others. 



W. DeW. Hyde. 



GEORGE HOWARD DARWIN (1845-1912) 



Foreign Honorary Member in Class I, Section 1, 1898. 



Sir George Darwin is preeminently known for his investigations on 

 the genesis of the Earth-Moon system. Starting with the effects 

 produced by tidal friction he applied mathematics to the solution of 

 a problem which had long been a matter amongst astronomers for 

 speculation only. In a series of papers he was able to show that most 

 of the present features of the system could have been produced by the 

 tidal inter-action of two bodies which were once nearly in contact and, 

 in the early stages at least, of a viscous character. He then undertook 

 another set of investigations in order to see how this close contact 

 might have developed from a single body. This involved an exami- 

 nation of the forms produced when the rate of rotation of a liquid mass 

 is gradually increased. A laborious investigation resulted in the 

 development of the pear-shaped figure of relative equilibrium, the 

 neck of the pear showing to tendency to break off as the angular 

 velocity increased. Thus a continuous development is exhibited 

 which is able to lead to the conditions as far as we know them at the 

 present time. Whether the actual history of the Earth-Moon system 

 is that outlined by Darwin will probably always raise doubts which 

 can never be settled; his hypothesis, however, is the only one worked 

 out by exact methods, and is generally admitted to be much the most 

 probable of all those which have been devised. 



In more practical lines Darwin reorganized the methods for ana- 

 lysing and predicting the ocean tides of our globe. In his early years he 



