196 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



artistic work which his trained judgment and fine critical insight 

 perceived to be sound and true. Indeed, this sense of "finish" and 

 feeling for artistic excellence, amounting almost to fastidiousness, 

 was seen, not only in his actual manipulative work and in the way in 

 which he arranged and perfected his experimental illustration, but in 

 the manner and form in which he put together and presented any 

 account of his labours. His lectures at the Eoyal Institution were 

 invariably illustrations of this. Perhaps no man since Tyndall's day 

 ever handled a Friday evening discourse with more tact and skill 

 than did Roberts- Austen. His matter was always fresh, his experi- 

 ments always interesting, frequently daring, and occasionally strikingly 

 original. He never tried to be rhetorical or pretended to be eloquent, 

 but there was a certain literary finish in his sayings, a feeling for 

 epigram, a sense of proportion in arrangement, and at times a quiet, 

 subdued touch of humour which altogether made him delightful to 

 listen to. 



The Eoyal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers records that 

 Eoberts- Austen published some two dozen papers, for the most part 

 singly, but occasionally in collaboration with Sir Norman Lockyer, 

 Prof. Osmond and the late Dr. Alder Wright. 



These papers made their appearance in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 in the Proceedings of the Eoyal Society, in the Journal of the Chemical 

 Society, in the Philosophical Magazine and in the Eeports of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. They practically all 

 relate to metallurgical problems, or are connected with the scientific 

 side of his duties as an officer of the Mint. They deal with the spec- 

 troscopic characters of alloys, the physical and chemical nature of 

 alloys, the structure of metals and the connection between the pro- 

 perties of metals and the periodic law, and the nature of the hydrogen 

 occluded by palladium and by electro-deposited iron. 



In 1890, at the request of the Alloys Eesearch Committee of the 

 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he began to investigate the effects 

 of small admixture of certain elements on the mechanical and physical 

 properties of the common metals and their alloys. Whilst engaged on 

 that work he devised the recording pyrometer, an instrument which 

 has proved to be of the greatest value, not only to the investigator of 

 pure science, but also to the practical metallurgist in recording the 

 temperature of annealing and other furnaces, and that of the blast in 

 blast-furnaces. The results of these investigations are embodied in 

 reports to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which afford a 

 mass of valuable information concerning the structure of metals and 

 their alloys, and their behaviour under varying physical conditions. 



It was in the domain of physical metallurgy that he specially 

 excelled, and by his unwearied energy, by his skill and resourcefulness 



