Ixiv Annual Report of the Council. 



researches on the wave lengths of lines of the solar spectrum, 

 culminating in his Photographic map of the Normal Solar 

 Spectrum. 



In recent years his attention was directed chiefly to 

 alternating electric currents and their application in telegraphy, 

 and he served on several International Electrical Congresses. 



He took a keen interest in scientific research, and was a 

 severe critic, both of his own and of others work. 



(See obituary notice in Amer. Journ. Sci., xi., 1901, p. 459.) 



C.H.L. 



Peter Guthrie Tait, M.A., F.R.S.E., Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, Honorary Member 

 of this Society since 1868, died on the 4th July, 1901. 



He was born at Dalkeith, on the 28th April, 1831, and after 

 being educated at the Academy and the University, Edinburgh, 

 entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1848. He was senior 

 wrangler and ist Smith's Prizeman, and was elected Fellow and 

 Mathematical Lecturer of his College in 1852. In 1854 he 

 became Professor of Mathematics at Queen's College, Belfast, 

 and in i860 succeeded Forbes as Professor of Natural Philosophy 

 in the University of Edinburgh, a position he resigned, owing to 

 ill health, in February, 1901. 



During his career he published more than a hundred scientific 

 memoirs, which have been collected in two quarto volumes, and 

 ten treatises on various departments of natural philosophy. Of 

 the treatises, that on Dynamics, the beginnings of a general work 

 on Natural Philosophy, written in conjunction with Lord Kelvin, 

 is invaluable to student and teacher alike, while those on Heat, 

 Light, and Properties of Matter have proved their utility as text 

 books by passing through several editions. 



Tait's scientific work covered a wide ground. His work on 

 the "Foundations of the Kinetic Theory of Gases " is of funda- 

 mental importance in the subject, and shows the depth of his 

 mathematical knowledge, while his work on Thermo-electricity, 

 equally fundamental, and his contributions to the " Physics and 



