Sir John Conroy. 247 



1887 and was elected a Fellow three years later. To Oxford men the 

 combination of the names of these Colleges suggests some width of 

 sympathy. The religious ideas which Conroy received as an under- 

 graduate and retained through life made his good friends who shared 

 these ideas especially dear to him but a nature grateful for every 

 kindness and sympathetic with all that is good could offer the most 

 genuine and considerate friendship to men of quite other schools of 

 thought. 



As a College tutor in Balliol, which became his home, Conroy had 

 a quite exceptional popularity and success. A fellow-tutor, most 

 capable of judging, writes : 



" The courtesy and the kindness which you remember always made 

 him a peculiar favourite both with his colleagues and his pupils, and 

 not seldom enabled him to mediate between them. I often noticed, 

 too, how gravely men would receive from him a rebuke or expostula- 

 tion of which they would have thought much less in the mouths of 

 others. They regarded him as untainted with the academical spirit, 

 and as having an experience of the world and of affairs which none of 

 the rest of us haC.." 



During several years before his death Conroy had occasional 

 symptoms of lung disease, which became gradually more grave. Soon- 

 after the beginning of the Michaelmas term, 1900, he was advised to 

 seek a warmer climate in Italy. But the disease was not to be^ 

 vanquished. He died at Rome on the 15th of December, and was- 

 buried in the English Cemetery, leaving to his friends the helpful 

 memory of a gracious and noble life. 



Conroy's scientific work related chiefly to optical observations and 

 measurements. Although it was his habit, with characteristic modesty, 

 to bring each paper for his old tutor to look over -a welcome task 

 yet a proper account of the work can only be given by a physicist whose 

 work has been, in part at least, of the same character. The account 

 which follows is due to the kindness and competent knowledge of 

 Dr. A. E. Tutton : 



The scientific work of the late Sir John Conroy consists of 17 

 memoirs contributed during the years 1873 to 1899, to "The Philo- 

 sophical Transactions and Proceedings of the Eoyal Society," " The 

 Journal of the Chemical Society," and " The Philosophical Magazine"; 

 and a further contribution to " Nature " on the subject of the spectrum 

 of the light emitted by the glow-worm. 



Like so many physicists, Conroy commenced his scientific work 

 with a contribution to pure chemistry, a memoir on the " Dioxides of 

 Calcium and Strontium" ("Journ. Chem. Soc.," 1873, 808). Anew 

 method of preparing these dioxides is described, consisting in the 

 addition of a solution of sodium peroxide to the solution of a calcium 



D 



