xlvi Annual Report of the Coiindl. 



The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow celebrated the 

 Centenary of its foundation on Novetnber 12th, 1902, and this 

 Society was represented by Professor A. Schuster, F.R S. 



The Council has awarded : — 



The Wilde Medal for 1903 to Professor F. \V. Clarke, of the 

 United States Geological Survey, for his distinguished services 

 to Chemical Science, and especially for the masterly judgment 

 he has shown in his critical discussion of the atomic weight 

 determinations of all the elements. 



A Dalton Medal (struck in 1864) to Professor Osl)orne 

 Reynolds, F.R.S., for his writings and researches on hydro- 

 dynamics, on the dimensional properties of matter, on the theory 

 of lubrication, and on the mechanical equivalent of heat. 



Professor F. W. Clarke has been appointed to deliver the 

 Wilde Lecture. 



The Council has arranged for the medals to be presented and 

 the Wilde Lecture to be delivered on Tuesday, May 19th, 1903. 



George Gabriel Stokes was the son of the Rev. Gabriel 

 Stokes, rector of Skreen, Ireland. He was born in 1819, and 

 was educated at Bristol and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 

 where he graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1841. He was 

 elected to a Fellowship in the same year, and entered at once on 

 a series of investigations in mathematical physics whi( h have long 

 ranked as classics, and which are marked from the first by a rare 

 combination of analytical power and physical insight, set forth 

 with almost unfailing accuracy. He was elected to the Lucasian 

 Chair of Mathematics in 1849, and held this post till his death, 

 lecturing almost to the end on his favourite subjects of Hydro- 

 dynamics and Optics with undiminished vigour and enthusiasm. 

 His period of greatest productiveness lay in the ten or fifteen 

 years following his degree; in 1854 he accepted the Secretaryship 

 of the Royal Society, and for the next 40 years he spared neither 

 time nor labour in discharging the duties of that otifice, reading 



