xxviii. Annual Report of the Council. 



containing it. The result was the discovery of a n'ew constituent 

 of the atmosphere, the element argon, with its strange' proper- 

 ties. Almost immediately after the discovery of the new element 

 had bjeen announced, Ramsay discovered terrestrial helium, the 

 hitherto hypothetical solar element, distinguished by the charac- 

 teristic line Dg in the solar spectrum^ in the gases from tlie 

 mineral cleveite. Subsequently Ramsay isolated three other 

 elements, companions of argoni, from the atmosphere, namely, 

 ■neon, krypton, and xenon, all belonging, like argon, to the zero 

 group in the periodic scheme. As Tilden has remarked, " to 

 have added an entire group of new elements to the periodic 

 scheme is an achievement both unexpected and unparallelexi" 



Shdrtly 'after the discovery of radium by Madame Curie in 

 1902, Ramsay and Soddy added a fact of fundamental import- 

 ance when they identified the gaseous product of the disintegra- 

 tion of radium as helium. Later, Ramsay placed the radium 

 iem.anation, which he called niton, in the list of inactive gases, 

 and, in conjunction with Dr. Whyttlaw Gray, actually determined 

 its density, and hence its molecular and atomic weig'ht, working 

 wi'th a volume of the gas which only oneasured one-fifteenth of 

 a cubic millimetre! 



Ramsay wa|s a most distinguished and successful investigator 

 and a wonderful manipulator. He had a remarkable command 

 of foreign languages. He gave lectures to large audiences in 

 German in Berlin, and in French in Paris, and; at the opening 

 meeting of the Internationa] Congress of Applied Chemistry 

 in London in 1909 the readiness with which he addressed the 

 audience in thje four ofifi'cial languages successively, English, 

 Prejich, Gerinan, and Italian, attracted great interest and 

 admiration. 1 



Naturally, Ramsay was the recipient of many honours and 

 distinctions. iHe was elected a member of most of the scientific 

 societies in the world, and many universities conferred honorary 

 degrees on him. He received the Davy Medal from the Royal 

 Society in 1895, the Longstaffe Medal from the Chemical Society 

 in 1897, and in 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for 

 Chemistry. He was elected President of the Socielty of Chemical 

 Industry in 1903, landjof the Chemical Society in 1907. On March 

 28th, 1899, Ramsay gave the Wilde Lecture for that year before 

 ou'r Society, on " The newly-discovered Elements and their rela- 

 tion to the Kinetic Theory .of Gases." This wa{s not long after 

 the announcement of the discovery of the new elements, and 

 many of the present members of the Society will remember the 

 great interest which was taken in that lecture. The lecturer was 

 elected an Honorary Member of the Society in April of the 

 same year. R. L. T. 



