SKETCH OF HEINRICH HERTZ. 721 



that saw him there, the very picture of youthful vigor and life, could 

 have forboded tliat those flue and i)enetratiug eyes, to which for the 

 first time siuce our earth turned around its poles electric waves had 

 been revealed, were so soon to be closed in death ! 



Soon Professor Hertz received flattering calls to the most prominent 

 universities. He preferred the smaller town of Bonn, where he settled 

 down in 1890, even to Berlin, tlie capital, because what lie sought after 

 was the most serious and fruitful work, not glory and outward advan- 

 tage. In Bonn he succeeded to the eminent physicist, Professor Clau- 

 sius. This was in itself a high distinction conferred ui)on so young 

 a man as Professor Hertz. Cousidered all over Europe as one of the 

 most prominent, he Avas looked up to as one of the most promising 

 leaders in the science of electricity. Not only had his own country con- 

 ferred high honors npon this young and ardent worker, but the chief 

 academies of England, France, Italy, Austria, and l^nssia now crowned 

 his eftbrts with prizes, honorary memberships, and other tokens of uni- 

 versal esteem and gratitude. 



Up to the middle of this century the jdienomeiui of electricity and 

 magnetism had been only inade(iuately explained by applying to them 

 Newton's law of gravitation, and asserting that in the same way as 

 celestial bodies exercise power of attraction at a distance and without 

 the intervention of a medium the two kinds of material electricity were 

 attracting and repelling each other while passing through space or 

 through nonconductors. 



It was the great English physicist Faraday who first sought to carry 

 the knowledge of electricity to a higher stage by entering upon the 

 study of phenomena with a mind free from preconceived opinions. He 

 put forth as the foundation on which to base new theories his observa- 

 tions of electric and magnetic forces, their influence upon each other, 

 their attractions for material bodies, and their propagation by the 

 transmission of the excitation from one point of space to another. He 

 questioned the assumption of space being void, aud conjectured that 

 the ether which transmits the luminous waves sufl'ers modifications 

 perceived under the form of electrical and magnetic manifestations. 

 His discoveries, important as they were, gained due consideration only 

 when Faraday's great countryman. Maxwell, treated the same sub- 

 ject in a purely scientific and theoretical way, publishing in 1865 his 

 Mathematical Theory of Light. The nature and properties of ether he 

 left undecided, and they form to this day dominant questions, destined, 

 it seems, ultimately to reveal the deepest secrets of natural science. 

 Maxwell labored to confirm the connection, surmised by Faraday, 

 between light, electricity, and magnetism; the idea of velocity now 

 entered the theory and became of supreme importance. Maxwell 

 arrived at the conclusion that the velocity of electromotion in a given 

 medium must be identical with the velocity of light in the sajne 

 medium, and that therefore ether, being contained in all ponderable 

 SM 94 40 



