HEKMAI^^Is^ YON HELMHOLTZ.' 



By AliTHUE W. EUCKER, F. E. S. 



Death lias been busy lately among tlie ranks of German i^liysicists. 

 Hertz, Kundt, and Von Uelmlioltz have all been laid low within a few 

 months, and the world is the iioorer by some of the best promise of the 

 future and the ripest experience of the past. 



The last named on this sad death roll was for long regarded as the 

 doyen of the physical sciences in Germany. He celebrated his seven- 

 tieth birthday three years ago, and on that occasion the whole world 

 (to quote his own words) "from Tomsk to Melbourne" united to do him 

 honor. The close of his career thus lacks the element of tragedy, 

 which shocked us when we heard that Hertz, in his early maturity, 

 before we had ceased to wonder at his first great success, was#dead. 



But the elder, like the younger man, died too soon, working to the 

 last. He held one of the highest scientific posts in Germany. Long 

 mathematical papers have quite recently been contributed by him to 

 the Berlin Berichte. He was present at the meeting of the British 

 Association at Edinburgh in 1892, at the Chicago Congress of Electri. 

 cians in 1893. It was hoped that he would have attended the meeting 

 of the British Association at Oxford in 1894. 



No remarkable events distinguished the earlier years of Helmholtz 

 from those of the majority of clever middle-chiss lads. His mother, 

 Caroline I*eun, was of English descent; his father was a professor of 

 literature in the gymnasium at Potsdam, who, both in and out of school, 

 did all that he could to help his promising boj-. On looking back to 

 his youth. Von Helmholtz accused himself of a "bad memory for dis- 

 connected things," but admitted that he had an unusual power for 

 grasping and remembering the details of a connected train of thought. 



When he began the systematic study of geometry he astonished his 

 teachers with the practical knowledge of the laws of form which he 

 had already attained, chietly by the aid of wooden blocks. He acquired 

 "a great love of nature," was especially attracted by physics, and con- 

 fessed that while the class was reading Cicero or Virgil, he was often 

 busy with illicit calculations under the desk. 



But, though he describes his interest in the special line of study to 

 which he subsequently adhered as "amounting even to a passion," it 



From the Fortuiglitly Eeview, November, 1894, Vol. LVI, uew series, No. 135. 



709 



