March 3, 1921] 



NATURE 



29 



Calendar of Scientific Pioneers. 



March 3, 1702. Robert Hooke died. — One of the 



earliest and most vigorous members of the Royal 

 Society, Hooke was Gresham professor of astronomy. 

 He constructed the first Gregorian telescope, first 

 applied a spiral spring for the regulation of watches, 

 pointed out the real nature of combustion, and pro- 

 posed to measure the force of gravity by means of a 

 pendulum. He died in the old Gresham College, and 

 is buried in St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate. 



March 3, 1808. Johann Christian Fabricius died. — 

 Professor of natural history at Copenhagen and then 

 at Kiel, Fabricius by his writings exercised great 

 influence on the development of entomology. 



March 3, 1879. William Kingdon Clifford died.— A 

 brilliant mathematician and thinker, Clifford died at 

 the age of thirty-three while occupying the chair of 

 applied mathematics in University College, London. 



March 5, 1827. Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace 

 died. — ^The son of a poor farmer of Normandy, 

 Laplace went to Paris at the age of eighteen. There 

 he was befriended by D'Alembert, and speedily rose 

 to a high position among, the group of distinguished 

 men of science who adorned France during the Revo- 

 lutionary period. An astronomer, physicist, and mathe- 

 matician, his " Mecanique Celeste," published in five 

 volumes between 1799 and 1825, is regarded as one 

 of the noblest monuments of human genius. His 

 tomb is in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, near that of 

 Moliere's. 



March 5, 1827. Alessandro Volta died. — Born in 

 Como in 1745, Volta was for twenty-five years pro- 

 fessor of natural philosophy at Pavia. His invention 

 of the voltaic pile was made in 1799, and the fol- 

 lowing year he communicated his discovery through 

 Sir Joseph Banks to the Royal Society. So great 

 was the interest raised by Volta 's invention that 

 Napoleon called him to Paris in order to see the 

 experiments. At the Centenary Exhibition at Como 

 in 1899 Volta 's books and papers and much of the 

 apparatus he left were destroyed by fire. 



March 5, 1866. William Whewell died. — A man of 

 encyclopaedic knowledge, Whewell was for many 

 years Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He 

 wrote much on scientific subjects, and made important 

 additions to the theory of tides. 



March 6, 1908. William Edward Wilson died.— After 

 accompanying Huggins on an eclipse expedition to 

 Oran, Wilson set up an observatory at Danamona, 

 W^estmeath. He carried out notable investigations 

 on the temperature of the sun. 



March 7, 1904. Ferdinand Andre Fouque died. — A 

 professor of the College de France, Fouque was one 

 of the earliest workers in the field of the microscopic 

 examination of rocks and minerals, of which Sorby 

 was the great pioneer. 



March 9, 1851. Hans Christian Oersted died. — 

 Twenty years after Volta 's invention of the voltaic 

 pile. Oersted, then professor of natural philosophy at 

 Copenhagen, made the observation that a wire uniting 

 the ends of a voltaic battery affected a magnet in its 

 vicinitv. Following" up this discovery, in 1820 

 he published his tract, " Experiments on the Effects 

 of Opposing Electricity upon the Magnetic Needle," 

 the effect of which was described by Forbes as in- 

 stantaneous and wonderful. The ideas of Oersted 

 were seized upon by Ampere, Arago, Davy, Seebeck, 

 and Faraday, and in their hands led to rapid develop- 

 ment of the science of electromagnetism, of which 

 Oersted is rightly regarded as one of the founders. 



E. C. S. 



NO. 2679, VOL. 107] 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 

 Royal Society, February 17. — Prof. C. S. Sherring- 

 ton, president, in the chair. — Dr. C. Chree : A com- 

 parison of magnetic declination changes at British 

 observatories. A comparison is made of rnean 

 monthly, daily, and hourly .values at different stations, 

 and of the relative amplitudes of the oscillatory move- 

 ments which frequently occur even on comparatively 

 quiet davs. Use is made of magnetic curves from 

 Eskdalernuir, Stonyhurst, Falmouth, and Kew ob- 

 servatories. — Prof. H. M. Macdonald : The transmis- 

 sion of electric waves around the earth's surface. — 

 Prof. T. H. Havelock : The stability of fluid motion. 

 The object is to illustrate the use of the criterion, 

 introduced by Reynolds and modified by Orr, as a 

 measure of the degree of stability of various fluid 

 motions under different boundary conditions. Cases 

 examined are the flow of a stream with a free surface, 

 and the flow between fixed planes under different fields 

 of force and boundary conditions of no slip or no tan- 

 gential stress or constant normal pressure due to the 

 disturbance from the steady state. — Prof. W. H. 

 Young : The transformation of integrals. — Dr. J. L. 

 Haughton and Kathleen E. Bingham : The constitution 

 of the alloys of aluminium, copper, and zinc contain- 

 ing hig'h percentages of zinc The constitution of 

 aluminium-copper-zinc alloys containing not more 

 than 15 per cent, of aluminium and 10 per cent, of 

 copper is discussed. The investigation has been 

 carried out by the study of the heat absorptions and 

 evolutions which take place in heating and cooling 

 allovs between temperatures at which they are liquid 

 and ordinary temperatures; by the measurement of 

 electrical resistance at various temperatures; and 

 by microscopic study of specimens which have 

 been annealed for prolonged periods and quenched, 

 or very slowly cooled and quenched. From the 

 results obtained a model has been constructed to 

 represent the constitution at temperatures above 

 250° C. The diagram advanced by Rosenhain and 

 Archbutt has been used as one face of the ternary 

 prism, the other binary system face being somewhat 

 modified from Tafel's diagram. 



Geological Society, February 2.— Mr. R. D. Oldham, 

 president, in the chair. — H. "Bolton : A new species of 

 Blattoid (Archimvlacris) from the Keele group 

 (Stephanian) of Shropshire. The author describes the 

 basal portion of a new type of Blattoid wing found 

 bv Mr. John Pringle in core-material of purple marly 

 shale from a borehole for water. The wing belongs 

 to the genus Archimylacris, and is closely allied to 

 A. Lerichei, Pruvost, and A. Dessatllyi. Lefiche, from 

 the upper beds of the Westphalian of Lievin, Northern 

 France.— C. E. Tilley : The granite-gneisses of 

 Southern Evre Peninsula (South Australia) and their 

 associated amphibolites. Southern Eyre Peninsula 

 is underlain by a complex series of pre-Cambrian 

 rocks subject to prolonged erosion, but now in part 

 covered bv weathered products and recent aeolian 

 sediments.' The fundamental platform of the eastern 

 half of the peninsula consists of granite-gneisses, 

 amphibolites, and hornblende-schists, embraced within 

 the Flinders series. The petrography of the rocks is 

 described and the siffnificance of their mineralogical 

 constitution discussed. The gneissic structure is a 

 primarv gneissic banding arising from flow-movements 

 in a heterogeneous magma. The amphibolites are 

 considered as representing more basic and earlier 

 igneous intrusions, orobably of the same igneous cycle 

 and connected with the one great orogenic epoch, 

 which have become thermally metamorphosed. Inter- 



