154 



NATURE 



\_Dec. 



D' 



1SS7 



considerable knowledge of chemistry and botany, but 

 afterwards confined his attention more especially to 

 physics, and lectured experimentally on this subject for 

 several years in Trinity College. In his earlier days he 

 was an enthusiastic Alpine climber, and this led him to 

 direct his knowledge of physics towards the solution of 

 glacial problems. He commenced a few years ago, in 

 the ice-caves of Grindelwald, a series of observations on 

 the physical properties of ice, some of the initial results 

 of which were communicated to the Royal Society. He 

 was never able, however, to continue, much less to com- 

 plete, these observations, and perhaps the cruellest feature 

 to him of his illness last winter was that it prevented him 

 from spending the Christmas vacation at Grindelwald, as 

 he had hoped to do, in carrying on measurements of ice, 

 under the most natural conditions, in the depths of an 

 ice-cave. 



But the gain to science from Trotter's life is not to be 

 measured by his formal contributions to scientific litera- 

 ture. He had a great unwillingness to write " papers." 

 Though he served for several years as one of the secre- 

 taries, and at the time of his death was President, in the 

 second year of office, of the Cambridge Philosophical 

 Society, whose very life consists in scientific research, 

 and though in the discussions at the meetings he fre- 

 quently made his critical power felt, his name does not 

 often appear in the Society's publications. He was 

 especially interested in physiological optics, but, though 

 he made many observations, was always disinclined to 

 commit his results to paper. His real scientific usefulness 

 is to be seen in his University and College work. The 

 recent development of natural science (other than mathe- 

 matical) at Cambridge is coincident in tmie with, and in 

 great measure due to. Trotter's academic activity. 



In the encouragement given at Trinity to natural 

 science, in all the changes of University ordinances tend- 

 ing to encourage scientific research, and to place the 

 teaching of science on a broader and firmer basis, it is 

 easy to trace his hand. He did not always have his own 

 way, and often thought it prudent to accept an arrange- 

 ment the shortcomings of which he clearly saw ; but his 

 influence, becoming more and more powerful year by 

 year, was always exerted to promote the growth of science 

 in the University, for he j\t least had no doubt that he 

 was thus working for the welfare both of the University 

 and of his College. He had such a firm grasp of the 

 dominant ideas, and was so wholly in touch with the 

 spirit, of ahnost every one of the various branches of 

 science, that each teacher and worker sought his help and 

 trusted in his counsel. On the other hand, his con- 

 spicuous sympathy with literature and art enabled him to 

 win from those who were strangers to science an assent 

 which would have been denied to claims advocated by 

 others. Happily, too, his singularly catholic mind and 

 temper were made still more potent by a remarkable skill 

 in handling details and conducting business. Were 

 Maxwell now alive, he would be able to tell, as Rayleigh 

 and Thomson can tell, how great a help Trotter was 

 to the Cavendish Laboratory and to physics. The 

 Regius Professor of Physic knows how often Trotter's 

 great knowledge of the needs of medicine on the one 

 hand, and of the capabilities of academic organization 

 on the other, as well as his legislative ability, were of 

 signal service in the difficult deliberations of the Board 

 of Medical Studies. Liveing can say how much not only 

 the very existence, but the details of construction, of the 

 new Chemical Laboratory are due to Trotter's co-opera- 

 tion with himself, and Stuart will tell a like story about 

 the Engineering School. Each science in turn brought 

 its wants to Trotter, and seldom brought them in vain. 

 He recognized Frank Balfour's powers as early as I did, 

 and did more for him in his College and in the University 

 than I. could do. All my younger friends whom I am 

 proud to think of as once my pupils, who are ma'cing 



their names known in physiology, in morphology, and in 

 botany, have always looked up to him as a friend who 

 never failed. And, as for myself, whatever I may have 

 done at Cambridge has been done from first to last 

 through him, and could not have been done without him : 

 in him I have lost my oldest, truest, best helpmate. 



I first came to know him a year or so before I received 

 my appointment at Trinity College. Happening to pay 

 a visit to Prof. Humphry, I was taken by him to call on 

 " a young Fellow of Trinity interested in science, and 

 especially in physiology, a capital fellow !" That " young 

 Fellow" was Trotter. I saw, even in our brief interview, 

 much in him to draw me to him, and he seemed to see 

 something of the same kind in me, so that when, a year 

 after, a sudden change in all my plans placed me within 

 the walls of Trinity, he and I began a friendship which 

 has ceased only with his death. All through the thirteen 

 years during which, while working within the University, I 

 was really outside the University, my every movement 

 was made by and through Trotter ; and since I have been 

 Professor my every movement has been made with him. 

 For seventeen years I have been able to make him a 

 partner in my plans ; he has shared in my hopes and 

 soothed me in my failures ; where I have been successful 

 he has helped, and when I have refused or neglected his 

 counsel I have generally gone wrong. When Balfour 

 was taken I could feel that Trotter was left, and now he 

 is gone too. 



But I ought not to thrust these personal matters on the 

 readers of Nature, and indeed, great as my own loss is, 

 that of Trinity College and of the University is far 

 greater. Those who know the University and knew 

 Trotter will feel at once how great a blow is his death at 

 the present juncture. The University, both in its scien- 

 tific and in its other work, is straitened for lack of 

 funds : laboratories cannot be built, teachers cannot be 

 adequately paid, research cannot be properly encouraged, 

 because the necessary money is not at hand. At the 

 same time the revenues of the several Colleges are suffer- 

 ing acutely from the depreciation in the value of land, nnd 

 a movement has been set on foot with the view of dimin- 

 ishing the contributions of the Colleges to the University. 

 If this movement is successful— and its success seems 

 assured by the fact that the new Member for the Llni- 

 versity has, in his address to the electors, given a con- 

 spicuous pledge that he, with his commanding scientific 

 authority, will support it in Parliament— it will need the 

 wisest and most skilful handling of details to prevent the 

 result proving disastrous to the cause of learning, and 

 especially of scientific learning, in the University. So 

 long as Trotter was alive we felt that we had one in whom 

 devotion to his College was no les? strong than his love for 

 the University and for learning, and we looked to him as 

 the man who, trusted alike by the Colleges and by the 

 University, would be found to have skill to steer us in the 

 difficult way before us. Now, in the darkness of his 

 death, we seem to be driving, without a pilot, straight 

 upon the rocks. M. Foster. 



T 



H. C. F. C. SCHJELLERUP. 

 HE Danish astronomer Prof Hans Carl Frederick 

 Christian Schjellerup died at the Copenhagen Ob- 

 servatory on November 13 after a prolonged illness. 

 He was born on February 8, 1827, at Odense, where 

 his father was a jeweller, and was apprenticed to a 

 watchmaker, but by private study he succeeded in supple- 

 menting the education he had received in his native town 

 so well that he was able to pass the entrance examination 

 at the Polytechnic School of Copenhagen in 1848. 

 Here he distinguished himself by his mathematical 

 ability, and was able to finish his studies in the course 

 of two years, when he passed the final examination 

 in applied mathematics and mechanics. In 1851 he 



