Annual Report of tJie Council. xliii 



experienced by a liquid film when stretched and kept at a 

 constant temperature gives a limit to the size of the molecules of 

 water. If a film of a two-hundred-millionch of a centimetre 

 thick can exist as liquid at all, it is certain there cannot be many 

 molecules in its thickness. 'I am writing' he says 'a short 

 sketch of those of the results of Maxwell and Clausius which I 

 use in it, to form part of an article on the Size of Atoms for 

 Nature J 



Lord Kelvin's remains lie by the side of those of Newton in 

 Westminster Abbey. At the invitation of the University of 

 ■Glasgow, your President followed the coffin to the grave. 



H. B. D. 



By the death of Sir William Henry Perkin, D.Sc, LL.D., 

 Ph.D., Dr. Ing., F.R.S , which occurred suddenly at his residence 

 at Harrow on July 14th, 1907, the Society lost one of its most 

 distinguished Honorary Members (he was elected April 26, 

 1892) and Organic Chemistry one whose brilliant researches, 

 both in pure and applied Science, entitle him to inclusion 

 among those giants of the last century to whose genius the 

 modern science of Organic Chemistry is due. 



Sir William Perkin was born in London on March 12th, 

 1838, and received his general education at the City of London 

 School. In 1853, at the early age of 15, he entered the Royal 

 College of Chemistry as a student under Hofmann, who two 

 years later appointed him his assistant. 



It is probably given to few men to live to see the results of 

 half a century of development of a discovery made by them, and 

 the meeting at the Royal Institution on Thursday, July 26th, 

 1906, will long remain unique in the Annals of Science in that 

 it represented the homage of the Scientific World to a man who 

 just fifty years before had planted the seed of a new industry, 

 seed, moreover, which was destined in this relatively short 

 period of time to yield so abundant and rich a harvest as not 



