480 CHEMICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 



admiration. He has also lectured to large popular audiences in 

 Berlin in German, and in Paris in French. 



He was created K.C.B. in 1902. The Davy Medal was awarded 

 to him by the Royal Society in 1895, and the LongstafE Medal by 

 the Chemical Society in 1897. 



P.S. Since the foregoing lines were written, and while this book 

 is in the press the news has reached the author that his great and 

 distinguished friend is no more. To the great grief of a large circle 

 of scientific friends and others it became known very early this 

 year that he was suffering from a malignant disease for which there 

 was no hope. He was released from further pain early in the morning 

 of Sunday, 23rd July, 1916. 



It is impossible in a few lines to estimate justly the immense 

 importance of Ramsay's work. Some of the most interesting of his 

 discoveries have been described in the foregoing pages, and it will 

 perhaps be sufficient in this place to remind the reader that to have 

 added an entire group of new elements to the periodic scheme is an 

 achievement both unexpected and unparalleled. 



The Rt. Hon. John William Strutt, LOKD RAYLEIGH (3rd Baron), 

 O.M., Past Secretary (1885-1896) and President of the Royal 

 Society (1905-1908), Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 

 and formerly Cavendish Professor of Physics (1879-1884), Professor 

 of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution (1887-1905). 



Lord Rayleigh was Senior Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman at 

 Cambridge in 1865. He has received many honours of which it is 

 only necessary to mention the Royal, Rumford, and Copley Medals 

 of the Royal Society and the Faraday Medal from the Chemical 

 Society. He was also Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1904. 



Lord Rayleigh's first paper was published in the Philosophical 

 Magazine in 1869, and since that time a stream of communications, 

 chiefly to the Royal Society, has been poured forth on a great 

 variety of physical subjects, in which a rare combination of high 

 mathematical powers with great experimental skill is manifest. 

 Chemistry is indebted to his work chiefly for the series of experi- 

 mental investigations, begun about 1887, on the relative densities 

 of the principal gases. This enquiry culminated in the discovery of 

 argon in the atmosphere, which was announced in association with 

 Professor Ramsay by Lord Rayleigh at the Oxford Meeting of the 

 British Association in 1894. 



PROFESSOR THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS, Professor of Chemis- 

 try, Harvard University, Cambridge (Mass.), U.S.A., and Director 

 of the Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory. 



Professor Richards, though still a young man, having been born 



