XXXIX 



Associate of the French Academy ; and in 1855 Member of the Bel- 

 gian Academy, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society. 



After the death of Gauss he was appointed Professor of the 

 Higher Mathematics in the University of Gottingen, in the spring of 

 1855, and entered upon the duties of his office in the autumn of the 

 same year. He returned in bad health from an excursion in Switz- 

 erland in the autumn of 1858, and died at Gottingen on the 5th of 

 May, 1859. 



By his death the University of Gottingen has lost not only a di- 

 stinguished teacher and a man of the brightest intellect, but per- 

 haps the only mathematician of the time likely to succeed in com- 

 pleting the unfinished works of Gauss, a task which he had declared 

 himself willing to undertake. 



His mathematical memoirs, the first of which was presented to the 

 Institute of France in 1825, are too numerous to admit of introducing 

 their titles into this notice. They are published in the * Transactions ' 

 of the Berlin Academy from the year 1833 to 1854, in 'Crelle's 

 Journal' from 1828 to 1857, in the 'Monatsberichte' of the Academy 

 for 1852-1855, and in volumes iv., v., ix., xii. of ' Liouyille's Journal.' 



THE BARON FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER VON HUM- 

 BOLDT, was the second son of Alexander George von Humboldt, 

 descended from a noble Pomeranian family. His father was a major 

 in the Prussian army, and had served with distinction as aide-de-camp 

 to the Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in the seven years' war. The 

 distinguished subject of our present brief notice was born at Berlin on 

 the 1 4th of September, 1769. At the age of ten years he lost his father. 

 From 1787 to 1789 he studied, first for some months in the Univer- 

 sity of Frankfort on the Oder, and afterwards in that of Gottingen. 

 During the vacations, he made geological excursions to the Harz, 

 and on the banks of the Rhine, and published the results of his 

 observations under the title ' Ueber die Basalte am Rhein, nebst 

 Untersuchungen uber Syenit und Basanit der Alten.' In the spring 

 of 1790 he made a hasty excursion through Holland, England, and 

 France, in the company of George Forster, who sailed with Cook in 

 his second voyage round the world. On his return from this excur- 

 sion, he passed some months at Hamburg, preparing himself for a 

 post in the Finance department of his native country. In June 1791 



