November i6, 191 i] 



NATURE 



83 



ing with the question of specific heats. Prof. Nernst 

 gave an interesting- account of the experiments upon 

 the variation of specific heat with temperature down 

 to low temperatures and of their explanation in terms 

 of the "quantum" theory proposed by Prof. Einstein. 



The meeting took place under unusually pleasant 

 social conditions, for all the members were staying at 

 the same hotel and dined together. The interchange 

 of views on many problems of modern physics was a 

 feature of the occasion, and led to a much clearer 

 understanding of the points at issue. 



At the close of the meetings, Mr. Solvay invited the 

 conference to meet again in Brussels in 1913. 



E. Rutherford. 



SIR SAMUEL WILKS, BART., F.R.S. 

 C IR SAMUEL WILKS, at the time of his death, on 

 »^ November 8, the senior fellow of the Royal Col- 

 lege of Physicians of London, was born at Camberwell 

 on June 2, 1824. He was the second son of Joseph 

 Barber Wilks, treasurer to the East India Company, 

 who himself had many ancestors in the service of that 

 company. He was educated at Aldenham. In 1840 he 

 was apprenticed to a family doctor at Camberwell, 

 Mr. Richard Prior, whose widow he subsequently mar- 

 ried. He began to attend lectures at Guy's Hospital 

 in 1841, and took the M.D. London in 1850. He 

 earned many distinctions at the University. In 1856 he 

 became a fellow of the College of Physicians, and 

 assistant physician to Guy's Hospital, in 1867 full 

 physician; in 1870 he obtained his F.R.S., and in 

 1897 his baronetcy. He was president of the Royal 

 College of Physicians from 1896 to 1899, and he was 

 a governor of Guy's Hospital. 



Wilks began work at a period when most doctors 

 were satisfied with vague words that meant little ; 

 hence his desire to know the causes of things was 

 at that time remarkable, and led him to be the first 

 to make systematic post-mortem examinations when- 

 ever he could. When he gave up his work in the 

 post-mortem room, he had made more post-mortem 

 examinations than anyone alive except Virchow. In 

 the course of these he found that syphilis could affect 

 internal organs. As now we know that several in- 

 ternal diseases are due to it, this was a most important 

 discoverv. The original paper, entitled "On the 

 Syphilitic Affections of Internal Organs," was pub- 

 lished in the "Guy's Hospital Reports" for 1863. Of 

 it in later years Wilks wrote, " I regard this as the 

 most noteworthy and original article it has been my 

 good fortune to write." 



He was a great observer, and was the first to point 

 out that excess of alcohol causes paralysis of the limbs, 

 and that atrophic lines may form on the skin apart 

 from stretching of it ; he described and named the con- 

 dition of the knuckles called "verruca necrogenica," 

 and under the name of arterial pyaemia he described 

 what is now known as malignant endocarditis ; also 

 he did much to establish firmly that Bright 's disease, 

 Addison's disease, and Hodgkin's disease were dis- 

 tinct entities. The last he discovered independently, 

 but found that Hodgkin had given an account of some 

 examples of it, and accordingly Wilks gave the name 

 Hodgkin's disease to it. 



All Wilks's investigations were done at Guy's Hos- 

 pital, and he greatly added to the reputation of its 

 medical school. His strong personality and his enthu- 

 siasm for the advancement of medical knowledge made 

 him much beloved by students, and by his influence 

 many were stimulated to take an interest in their 

 work as an intellectual pursuit. He was always the 

 champion of investigators, and was one of the most 

 energetic in forming the Society for the Advancement 



NO, 2194, VOL. 88] 



of Medicine by Research. His mind was extra- 

 ordinarily active even when well advanced in years. 

 He did not retire until he was seventy-seven years of 

 age, and then, when he went to live at Hampstead, he 

 was, at the age of more than eighty, president of 

 the Hampstead Scientific Society, and read papers 

 before it. 



His "Pathological Anatomy," first published in 

 1869, has gone through three editions. It has become 

 one of the medical classics, and is still the best book 

 on the subjects of which it treats. It has been well 

 said that if you think you have discovered a new fact 

 in morbid anatomy, you will find it was observed bv 

 Wilks and is mentio>ied in his book. Students were 

 so much attracted by the matter of his lectures that at 

 their request they were published, and form his two 

 other books, " Diseases of the Nervous System " and 

 " Specific Fevers and Diseases of the Chest." 



W. H. W. 



MR. JOHN BROWN, F.R.S. 

 'IT HE death of Mr. John Brown, which, as an- 

 -•■ nounced in last week's issue, occurred at Bel- 

 fast on November i, removes one who was a scientific 

 amateur in the best sense of that term, and whose 

 enthusiasm bore fruit in much solid work in the 

 department of physics in which he was specially in- 

 terested. 



Born in 1850, the son of a prominent linen mer- 

 chant, in the north of Ireland, Mr. Brown, after a 

 very short experience of business life, retired from 

 the firm which bears his father's name in order to 

 devote himself entirely to the scientific and engineer- 

 ing pursuits for which his bent had been clearly shown 

 from boyhood. He soon became absorbed in elec- 

 trical matters, particularly in the question of Volta 

 contact electricity, about which then and since so 

 much controversy has been carried on. His first paper 

 on the subject was published in The Philosophical 

 Magazine in 1878, and was followed by a series of 

 others in which he detailed the results of his experi- 

 ments and lent important support to the chemical 

 theory of these phenomena. The work was done 

 largely by means of home-made apparatus, and gave 

 evidence of experimental ingenuity and carefulness of 

 a high order. He maintained that the effects were 

 due to films of condensed vapour or gas on the sur- 

 face of the metals, and regarded the pair of metals 

 in contact as equivalent to a voltaic cell, divided in 

 the electrolyte, and having the amount of electrolyte 

 reduced until only an invisible film remains on each 

 plate. In support of this theory he tried the effect of 

 surrounding the metals by different gases, and obtained 

 variations in the value of the potential difference, 

 the proper interpretation of which was a matter of 

 some controversy. 



Mr. Brown was elected a fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1902, and in the following year he pub- 

 lished what proved to be his last contribution to the 

 voltaic question. In this he claimed to have got rid 

 of the gaseous films by heating the plates to a high 

 temperature in a bath of petroleum, when the differ- 

 ence of potential was found to disappear. Before his 

 death he had planned to repeat this crucial experiment 

 with additional precautions during the present winter. 



His other publications of pure scientific interest 

 were in connection with the allied question of electro- 

 lytic conduction. On this he took up a position 

 strongly hostile to the modern developments of the 

 dissociation hypothesis. 



Mr. Brown was much interested in mechanical and 

 engineering matters, especially in connection with 

 motor engineering, on which he did some pioneering 



