734 



NATURE [August 4, 192 1 



Calendar of Scientific Pioneers. 



August 5, 1872. Charles Eugene Delaunay died. — 



Known principally for his work on the theory of the 

 moon, Delaunay in 1867 succeeded Poncelet in the 

 chair of experimental physics in the Sorbonne, and in 

 1870 was made director of the Paris Observatory. 

 He met his death by drowning off Cherbourg. 



August 6, 1879. Johann von Lamont died. — Though 

 a native of Scotland, Lamont spent his life in 

 Germany. Like Gauss, Hansteen, and Sabine, he 

 was a pioneer worker in terrestrial magnetism, and 

 in 185 1 discovered a decennial period in the daily 

 range of magnetical declination and earth currents. 

 He directed the Bogenhausen Observatory, near 

 Munich, and catalogued 34,674 stars. 



August 7, 1848. Jons Jakob Berzelius died. — The 

 contemporary of Dalton, Davy, and Gay-Lussac, 

 Berzelius occupied a pre-eminent position among 

 chemists. He discovered cerium, selenium, and 

 thorium, isolated silicon, zirconium, and tantalum, 

 was a founder of electro-chemistry, and bv his work 

 ■on atomic weights furnished chemists with a. set of 

 exact constants of great importance. He was secre- 

 tary and president of the Swedish Academv of 

 Sciences. 



August 7, 1898. James Hall died.— One of the most 

 distinguished of American geologists. Hall for sixtv- 

 two years was connected with the Geological Survey 

 of New York, and made valuable researches of the 

 palaeozoic invertebrata of that State. 



August 7, 1912. Francois Alphonse Forel died.— 

 Professor of anatomy and physiology at Lausanne, 

 Forel was best known for his researches in limnology, 

 and especially for his study of the seiches of Lake 

 Geneva. 



August 8, 1897. Victor Meyer died.— From Got- 

 tingen Meyer in 1889 went to Heidelberg as successor 

 to Bunsen. He discovered thiophen, introduced a new 

 method of determining vapour densities at high tem- 

 peratures, and made investigations in stereochemistry. 



August 8, 1919. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel died.— Pro- 

 fessor of zoology at Jena for more than forty years, 

 Haeckel was the first German biologist to make evolu- 

 tion the leading conception of biology. A prolific 

 writer, his "Natural History of Creation" appeared 

 in 1868, and his "Riddle of the Universe," contain- 

 ing his well-known monistic views, in 1899. 



August 9, 1899. Sir Edward Frankland died.— The 

 first professor of chemistry in Owens College, Man- 

 chester, Frankland afterwards succeeded Hofmann 

 at the Royal School of Mines. His investigation of 

 the laws of the formation of chemical compounds led 

 to the theory of valency, and in applied chemistry 

 he did very important work in connection with water- 

 supply and the pollution of rivers. He received the 

 Copley medal in 1894, and in 1897 was knighted. 



August 10, 1802. Franz Maria Ulric Theodore 

 Aepinus died. — Aepinus was born in • 1724, and 

 became mathematical tutor to the Russian Royal 

 Family. Among physicists he is known as the author 

 of " Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi," 

 175Q, the first systematic attempt to apply mathe- 

 matics to these subjects. 



August 10, 1915. Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley 

 died. — A graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, Moseley 

 by a systematic determination of the X-ray spectra of 

 many of the elements was led to the discovery that 

 the properties of an element are defined by its atomic 

 number, giving rise to " Moseley 's numbers," which 

 are recognised to be of fundamental importance. He 

 was killed in action at Suvla, on the Gallipoli Penin- 

 sula, at the age of twenty-seven. E. C. S. 



NO. 2701. VOL. 107] 



Societies and Academies. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, July 11.— M. Georges Lemoine 

 in the chair.— C. Moureu : The second conference of 

 the International Union of Pure and Applied 

 Chemistry.— S. Carrug : Research on triply ortho- 

 gonal systems.— M. Alayrac : The movement of a 

 solid in a resistant medium. Some of the results in a 

 recent communication by the author had been antici- 

 pated by M. Dulac. — MM. C. Nordmann and Le 

 Morvan : The determination of the effective tem- 

 peratures of some stars and their colour index. The 

 value of the "colour index" of stars can be deter- 

 mined by the authors' method of colour photometry. 

 This method results from two homogeneous measure- 

 ments, and avoids all the causes of error and uncer- 

 tainty due to the comparison of a magnitude deter- 

 mined separately by sight and -by photography.— A. 

 Lafay : The direct measurement of the mobilities of 

 electrified particles in gases. — D. Coster : The fine 

 structure of the series of X-rays. — A. Marcelin : The 

 superficial extension of soluble or volatile bodies. 

 Studies on the displacement of particles floating on 

 water by the changes in surface tension caused by 

 the introduction of a piece of camphor, menthol, anH 

 Jiobutylcamphol.- M. Fric : Contribution to the study 

 of the stability of nitrocellulose powders. The 

 changes in composition caused by ultra-violet light in 

 solutions of the powders in acetone were followed by 

 the resulting changes in the viscosity of the solutions. 

 —P. Lebeau and M. Picon : The action of sodam- 

 monium on diphenylmethane, fluorene, and indene. 

 Dimethylfluorene. Sodammonium reacts with indene 

 and fluorene, giving substituted sodium derivatives, 

 and at the same time hydrogen is added to a certain 

 proportion of the hydrocarbon. Indene gave 50 per 

 cent, of the dihvdride.- MM. Parlselle and Simon : 

 Syntheses of tertiary alcohols, starting with methvl- 

 ethylketone. — L. Longchambon : Rotatory power in 

 crystallised media. — P. Fallot and H. Termier : The 

 vertical extension of the marl facies containing 

 pyritic Cephalopods in the Island of Ibiza. — j. 

 Mascart : The method of working out averages in 

 ineteorology. A discussion of some of the difficulties 

 underlying the problem of taking true meteorological 

 averages. — P. Schereschewsky : The foundations of the 

 rational classification of clouds. — J. Politis : The role 

 of the chondriome in the formation of essential oils 

 in plants. — M. Molliard : The function of potassium 

 in the chemical actions and the reproductive func- 

 tions of the fungi. — MM. Cluzet and Bonnamour : 

 The electrocardiographic study of the arrest of the 

 heart in electrocution. — H. Marcelet : The hydro- 

 genation of some marine animal oils. The oils from 

 eight species of fish were treated with hydrogen in 

 presence of nickel carbonate as catalyst at a tem- 

 perature of 250*^ C. The changes in the iodine figure 

 arid melting point are given in each case ; all the 

 oils lost their disagreeable smell under the treatment. 

 — Mme. A. Drzewina and G. Bohn : The phenomena 

 of autoprotection and autodestruction in aquatic 

 animals. — A. Trillat and R. Kaneko : Activity of in- 

 fection by the air. Studies on the infection of mice 

 bv the Danvsz paratyphoid organism and by pneumo- 

 coccus. Of the various methods compared, the in- 

 fection bv bacterial fogs proved to be the most deli- 

 cate, positive results being obtained by much smaller 

 weights of bacterial emulsion when carried by ^ air 

 than when introduced by subcutaneous injection, 

 with food, etc.^ — H. Frossard : The action of the 

 orbiculo-costo-diaphragmatic reflex on the sympathetic 

 and parasympathetic systems. 



