770 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



to his grandfather the invention of the phosphoroscope, discussing 

 it and its results, which the following day more than verified. 



Becquerel recounted these circumstances with no boastful spirit, 

 but rather to attribute to his up-bringing much of his success. He 

 had the joy of seeing his son enter with distinction the same career 

 and to be able to transmit what had been his own heritage. Al- 

 though trained in science, his artistic tastes were not undeveloped. 

 In painting he was an enlightened connoisseur, owing this trait to 

 his ancester, Girodet, of whom he possessed some masterpieces, among 

 others admirable drawings, which he liked to show to his friends 

 and whose beauty he appreciated. 



His morals were of the highest, and he had a horror of all duplicity 

 and deceit. He had for all questions the broadest and most enlight- 

 ened tolerance. That spirit whose every effort strove for the attain- 

 ment of scientific truth knew how to avoid the lure of insufficient 

 evidence. While holding a clear-cut personal opinion, he was always 

 tolerant of any opinion of others having for its purpose the eleva- 

 tion of morals. 



This explains how he entered the Ecole Polytechnique at 19, in 

 1873; how from there he entered the Ponts-et-chausees and published 

 his first work at 22 years of age, in the year following his graduation 

 from the Ecole Polytechnique. From then until his death he never 

 ceased to publish works more and more remarkable. The Ecole 

 Polytechnique made him a lecturer in physics while he was yet only 

 an engineering student in order to give him the place as professor 

 upon the retirement of Potier, and the museum judged him worthy 

 of holding the chair already made illustrious by his father and 

 grandfather and held before them by Guy-Lussac. Merited honors 

 have never ceased to be his recompense; he was a member of the 

 more renowned foreign scientific bodies, the Royal Society of Lon- 

 don, the Academy of Berlin, the Academic Royale dei Lincei, the 

 National Academy of Washington. He received the medals and 

 prizes held in the highest esteem — the Rumford prize of London, in 

 1900 ; the Helmholtz medal of Berlin, in 1901 ; the Nobel prize, in 

 1903; the Barnard medal of the United States, in 1903. The Aca- 

 demic des Sciences made him its president in 1908, and at the same 

 time the Societe Frangaise de Physique bestowed upon him the widely 

 coveted title of " honorary member," and at the death of Lapparent 

 he was almost unanimously named its permanent secretary. He was 

 but 55 and seemed destined to long hold this worthy honor when 

 death cruelly snatched him away but a few weeks after he received it. 



Before a blow so cruel it is useless to express our regrets. The 

 homage due such a man and worthy of the memory which his own 

 family, his friends, scientists, and the whole world will retain is to 

 retrace as fully as is possible the history of his scientific achievements. 



