433 



NATURE 



{Sept. 6, 1888 



Sir Edward Strickland, K.C.B., Hon. Treasurer, and 

 Prof. Liversidge, F.R.S., and Dr. George Bennett, Hon. 

 Secretaries. 



The formation of the Council was afterwards proceeded 

 ■with, each learned or scientific Society electing one repre- 

 sentative for every hundred of its members ; and the Chief 

 Justice, Minister for Public Instruction, the Chancellor 

 and Vice-Chancellor of the Sydney University, the Mayor 

 of Sydney, and the Presidents of the Royal Societies in 

 other colonies were elected Vice-Presidents for the year. 



The Presidents of Sections were then elected, the 

 gentlemen chosen being all resident in other colonies 

 than New South Wales ; whilst the Secretaries of 

 Sections, as a matter of necessity, were elected from 

 amongst residents in Sydney. 



The Association is hence thoroughly Australasian in 

 its character, and the succeeding general meetings are 

 to take place in turn in the capitals of the other colonies, 

 the executive, officers being elected year by year by the 

 colony in which the meeting is held. 



The first general meeting is to be held at the Sydney 

 University, the opening ceremony, at which His Excel- 

 lency the Governor will be present, taking place on 

 Tuesday evening, August 28, when the Presidential 

 address will be delivered. 



On the following day the Sectional meetings for the 

 reading and discussion of papers will commence, and it is 

 thought that the principal portion of the business will 

 close with the end of the week. 



Up to the present time the titles of about ninety papers 

 have been sent in by gentlemen of distinction in science, 

 literature and art, in the different colonies, and it seems 

 probable that this number will be considerably increased 

 before the meeting. 



It may therefore be anticipated that the nature of the 

 work done by the Association during the first year of its 

 existence will be of a highly important and useful character. 



The more solid work of the meeting is to be lightened 

 by excursions to various places of interest to geologists, 

 botanists, and others ; and efforts are being made to 

 provide for the entertainment and comfort of visiting 

 members, as far as possible, so that they may spend their 

 time to the best advantage. 



The various steamship companies have arranged to 

 carry members proceeding to Sydney to attend the 

 meeting at a reduction of 20 per cent, on the ordinary 

 rates, and it is anticipated that liberal concessions will 

 also be granted in the railway fares. 



The rules, as already mentioned, are practically the 

 same as those of the British Association, and all who join 

 the Association before the first general meeting in 

 August next become original members, without entrance 

 fee, the subscription of^i entitling members to receive 

 the publications of the Association gratis. 



The number of members at the end of July exceeded 

 400. 



PROFESSOR RUDOLF JULIUS EMANUEL 

 CLA USIUS. 



T) Y the death of Prof. Clausius, which occurred on 

 -*-* August 24 last, science has lost another member of 

 the great triumvirate — Rankine, Clausius, and Thomson — 

 who, upon the foundation laid by the experimental work 

 of Davy and Rumford, the theoretical suggestions of 

 Mohr, Seguin, Mayer, and Colding (which, though rest- 

 ing on imperfect data and defective reasoning, were the 

 lesults of real scientific insight), and the splendid experi- 

 mental investigations of Joule, founded and built up the 

 great structure known as the science of thermodynamics. 

 Clausius was born at Coslin, in Pomerania, on January 

 2, 1822. While yet at school in Berlin, he gave unmis- 

 takable evidence of the bent of his mind towards mathe- 



matics and physics, and on the completion of his Uni- 

 versity course he became Privatdocent in the University 

 of Berlin and Instructor in Natural Philosophy at the 

 School of Artillery. He very soon gave evidence of his 

 power as an original worker, and some of his earliest 

 papers — " On the Nature of those Constituents of the 

 Atmosphere by which the Reflection of the Light within 

 it is effected," and " On the Blue Colour of the Sky, and 

 the Morning and the Evening Red" — contributed to Pog- 

 gendorff's Annalen, were selected for translation in the 

 first volume of Taylor's " Scientific Memoirs." 



In 1857 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philo- 

 sophy at the Polytechnic School of the Helvetic Con- 

 federacy at Ziirich. Here he continued his researches in 

 various branches of physics, and among these we may 

 mention, to give some idea of the extent and variety ot 

 his investigations, " The Influence of Pressure on the 

 Freezing-point," " The Mechanical Equivalent of an 

 Electric Discharge, and the Heating of the Conducting- 

 wire which accompanies it," " Electrical Conduction in 

 Electrolytes," and " The Effect of Temperature on 

 Electric Conductivity." He also published some short 

 papers on some purely mathematical questions, sug- 

 gested, however, by physical problems, and some papers 

 dealing with points of what is generally known as physical 

 chemistry. 



His attention was then directed towards the dynamical 

 theory of gases, owing to the light which it appeared 

 capable of throwing upon questions of thermodynamics. 

 The dynamical or kinetic theory of gases, which has 

 received such extensive developments at the hands of 

 Clerk Maxwell, Boltzmann, and others, was originally 

 suggested by J. Bernouilli about the middle of the last 

 century ; but it was Clausius who first placed it upon a 

 secure scientific basis. In 1866 he published a most im- 

 portant paper " On the Determination of the Energy and 

 Entropy of a Body" (translated in the Philosophical 

 Magazine), in which the very valuable and suggestive 

 conception of the entropy of a body was first set forth. 



In 1 869 he was appointed Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy in the University of Bonn. 



Among more recent papers of great importance we 

 may mention the following, all of which have been trans- 

 lated in the Philosophical Magazine : — " On a New- 

 Fundamental Law of Electrodynamics " ; '-On the Be- 

 haviour of Carbonic Acid in relation to Pressure, Volume, 

 and Temperature"; "On the Theoretic Deteimination 

 of Vapour-pressure and the Volumes of Vapour and 

 Liquid"; "On the Different Systems of Measures for 

 Electric and Magnetic Quantities"; "On the Employ- 

 ment of the Electrodynamic Potential for the Determina- 

 tion of the Ponderomotive and Electromotive Forces"; 

 " On the Theory of Dynamo-electrical Machines"; and 

 " On the Theory of the Transmission of Power by 

 Dynamo-electrical Machines." 



When we consider the far-reaching and fundamental 

 character of these and many other investigations, and the 

 very wide field which they cover, we cannot but wonder 

 at the marvellous energy of the great physicist who has 

 passed from among us. The Royal Society catalogue 

 contains a list of no less than seventy-seven papers pub- 

 lished up to 1873, and those published subsequently bring 

 the total number up to considerably over a hundred. 



In addition to these there is his great treatise on " The 

 Mechanical Theory of Heat," of which the first volume 

 was published in 1864, and a smaller work, " On the 

 Potential Function and the Potential." 



It would be impossible to discuss in detail the portions 

 of thermodynamics specially worked out by Clausius, as 

 his work is throughout closely interwoven with that ot 

 Rankine and Thomson, but it will be of interest to quote 

 the following from Prof. Rankine, who in his paper " On 

 the Economy of Heat in Expansive Machines," l says :- 



1 " Rankine's Miscellaneous Scientific Papers," p. 300. 



