1894.] Professor Oliver Lodge on the Work of Hertz. 321 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 1, 1894. 



Ludwig Mond, Esq. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the chair. 



Professor Oliver Lodge, D.Sc. LL.D. F.R.S. 



The Work of Hertz* 



The untimely end of a young and brilliant career cannot fail to strike 

 a note of sadness and awaken a chord of sympathy in the hearts of 

 his friends and fellow- workers. Of men thus cut down in the early 

 prime of their powers there will occur to us here the names of 

 Fresnel, of Carnot, of Clifford, and now of Hertz. His was a 

 strenuous and favoured youth; he was surrounded from his birth 

 with all the influences that go to make an accomplished man of 

 science — accomplished both on the experimental and on the mathe- 

 matical side. The front rank of scientific workers is weaker by his 

 death, which occurred on January 1, 1894, the thirty-seventh year of 

 his life. Yet did he not go till he had effected an achievement which 

 will hand his name down to posterity as the founder of an epoch in 

 experimental physics. 



In mathematical and speculative physics others had sown the 

 seed. It was sown by Faraday, it was sown by Thomson and by 

 Stokes, by Weber also doubtless, and by Helmholtz ; but in this 

 particular department it was sown by none more fruitfully and 

 plentifully than by Clerk Maxwell. Of the seed thus sown Hertz 

 reaped the fruits. Through his experimental discovery, Germany 

 awoke to the truth of Clerk Maxwell's theory of light, of light and 

 electricity combined, and the able army of workers in that country 

 (not forgetting some in Switzerland, France and Ireland) have done 

 most of the gleaning after Hertz. 



This is the work of Hertz which is best known, the work which 

 brought him immediate fame. It is not always that public notice is 

 so well justified. The popular instinct is generous and trustful, and 

 it is apt to be misled. The scientific eminence accorded to a few 

 energetic persons by popular estimate is more or less amusing to those 

 working on the same lines. In the case of Hertz no such mistake 

 has been made. His name is not over well known, and his work is 



* The illustrations in this abstract appeared, after the delivery of the discourse, 

 in a little book called " The Work of Hertz and some of his Successors," by- 

 Professor Lodge, and are inserted here by the kind permission of the proprietors 

 of the Electrician. 



Vol. XIV. (No. 88.) z 



