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soon being repeated in all the important laboratories of the world. 

 The English mathematical physicist, Oliver Heaviside, writing in 1891, 

 said: "Three years ago electromagnetic waves were nowhere. Shortly 

 after, they were everywhere." Here were researches of a most abstruse 

 and complex character, with no apparent utility and having no ele- 

 ments of popular appeal, and yet bringing to their author such acclaim 

 as had seldom been accorded to a man of science. Honors were 

 showered upon him on every hand, at home and abroad. In England, 

 where his work was especially appreciated, he was awarded the coveted 

 Rumford medal by the Royal Society. 



Hertz's characteristic modesty in referring to his own achievements 

 was matched only by his generosity in giving credit to the accomplish- 

 ments of others. In one of his lectures he said, "Such researches as I 

 have made upon this subject form but a link in a long chain. . . . Lack 

 of time compels me, against my will, to pass by the researches made by 

 many other investigators; so that I am not able to show you in how 

 many ways the path was prepared for my experiments, and how near 

 several investigators came to performing these experiments them- 

 selves." Mention has been made of the investigations of Sir Oliver 

 Lodge in the same field and the imminence of his discovery of the same 

 phenomena. It is pleasant, indeed, in this instance to be able to record 

 the absolute lack of any feeling of jealousy or envy on the part of either 

 of these courteous gentlemen. In the introduction to his collected 

 papers Hertz wrote, "I may here be permitted to record the good work 

 done by two English colleagues who at the same time as myself were 

 striving towards the same end. In the same year in which I carried 

 out the above research. Professor Oliver Lodge, in Liverpool, investi- 

 gated the theory of the lightning conductor, and in connection with 

 this carried out a series of experiments on the discharge of small con- 

 densers which led him on to the observation of oscillations and waves 

 in wires. Inasmuch as he entirely accepted Maxwell's views and 

 eagerly strove to verify them, there can scarcely be any doubt that if 

 •I had not anticipated him he would have succeeded in observing waves 

 in air, and thus also in proving the propagation with time of electric 

 force. Professor Fitzgerald, in Dublin, had some years before en- 

 deavored to predict, with the aid of theory, the possibility of such 

 waves, and to discover the conditions for producing them." 



On his part Lodge just as generously wrote, only a few years after- 

 wards, in an obituary of his rival: "Hertz stepped in before the English 

 physicists, and brilliantly carried off the prize. He was naturally and 

 unaffectedly pleased with the reception of his discovery in England, 

 and his speech on the occasion of the bestowal of the Rumford medal 



