Feb. 1 4, 1889] 



NATURE 



;69 



was the first to define with perfect clearness, and to show 



the true bearing of in relation to the connected ideas of 



electromotive force and strength of current. 



i At the meeting on January 31, resolutions, moved by the 



[ President of the Royal Society and by Sir Frederick Abel, 



; K.C.B., were adopted, expressing the concurrence of those 



• present with the proposal to erect a statue to Ohm, and 



appointing a Committee to make the scheme known in 



this country and to collect subscriptions. Dr. Hugo 



Miiller, F.R.S. (who, when a student at the University of 



Munich, was a pupil of Ohm's), was requested to act as 



Treasurer of the fund to be collected, and Profs. G. Carey 



Foster, F.R.S., and John Perry, F.R.S., were appointed 



Secretaries. 



The following memoranda, taken from Lament's 

 Denkrcdc to the Munich Academy, 1855, may not be 

 without interest at the present time:— Ohm was born 

 in Erlangen, where his family had been settled for 

 several generations. His father, who followed the 

 hereditary trade of lock-smith, was a man of active 

 intellect, and gained a very considerable acquaintance 

 with mathematics and physics. It was in great measure 

 owing to his example and encouragement that his two 

 sons, George Simon and Martin (who afterwards attained 

 great distinction as Professor of Mathematics in the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin), developed a love for similar studies. In 

 1805, G. S. Ohm became a student of the University of 

 Erlangen, whither he returned in 181 1, after some 

 years spent as a private tutor in Switzerland, and 

 then took his doctor's degree and established himself as 

 Privatdocent. For a short time he was a teacher in the 

 Realschiile at Bamberg, and in 18 17 obtained a more 

 important post as teacher of mathematics in the Jesuits' 

 Gymnasium at Cologne. It was while he held this ap- 

 pointment that his ideas as to" the laws of the galvanic 

 circuit took definite shape, and that his memorable 

 book, " Die galvanische Kette mathematisch bear- 

 beitet," was written. Soon after the publication of this 

 book in 1827, Ohm presented himself at the Ministry of 

 Education in Berlin, and there met with a reception so 

 little appropriate to the whole-hearted and self-sacrificing 

 devotion to science of which he was conscious, that he 

 felt it impossible to remain any longer in the public 

 service. He was thus driven to spend seven years in the 

 prime of life in a state of deep mental dejection, and with 

 very scanty means of subsistence. The end of this dismal 

 period came in 1833, when he was appointed, by the 

 Bavarian Government, Professor in the Polytechnic 

 School at Nuremberg. The award of the Copley Medal, 

 in 1841, already mentioned, cheered and encouraged him 

 still further, and in grateful acknowledgment he dedi- 

 cated to the Royal Society his " Molecular Physics." 

 From this time he came to be recognized as one of the 

 leading physicists of Germany, and "Ohm's law" soon 

 found its way into every text-book of physics. In 1849, 

 he was called to Munich as Curator of the Physical 

 Cabinet, and in 1852 he became Professor of Experi- 

 mental Physics in the University. On July 7, 1854, he 

 died suddenly from apoplexy. For a great part of his 

 life he had a hard fight with outward circumstances ; but 

 he seems to have remained throughout singularly simple- 

 minded and unassuming, and at the same time thoroughly 

 honest and conscientious in his work. G, C. F. 



A" 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH.^ 



T the commencement of the session 1883-84, the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh entered upon the second 

 century of its existence. Since its foundation it has had 

 among its members men whose fame is national and often, 

 world-wide— Joseph Black, Henry Dundas, James Hutton, 



•Proceedings, Sessions 1883-87. Transactions, Vol. xxx. Part 4 ; Vol. 

 xxxii. Parte 2, 3, 4 ; Vol. xxxiii. Parts i, 2. 



John Playfair, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, Adam 

 Fergusson, James Gregory, Henry Mackenzie, John Leslie, 

 William Wallace, Walter Scott, Maclaurin, Brewster, 

 Forbes, and more recently Clerk Maxwell ; and at present 

 it has members whose names will rank as high as these. 

 In the year 1886 the membership of the Society was 507, 

 and was rapidly increasing. The number of papers 

 communicated to it in the period 1883-87 was 317. We 

 shall therefore select for special notice a few of these, which 

 may be taken as typical of the work done by the Society ; 

 and it will be seen that its work, if large in quantity, is also 

 high in quality. We agree with the opinion expressed to 

 the Society by the Chairman in his opening address in 

 December 1886, that, "if we include the extra volumes 

 on the Ben Nevis observations, and on the botany of 

 Socotra, . . . the Proceedings and Transactions of the 

 Society during the past three years probably surpass in 

 bulk and importance those of any other Society in the 

 United Kingdom for the same period." 



In the department of mathematics, these volumes in- 

 clude valuable contributions to the science of situation, 

 or of those space-relations which are independent of 

 measure though not necessarily of number, from the Rev. 

 T. P. Kirkman and Prof. Tait. The former writer con- 

 tributes papers "On the Enumeration, Description, and 

 Construction of Knots of fewer than Ten Crossings," 

 and " On the 364 Unifilar Knots of Ten Crossings ; " a 

 note " On the Twists of Listing and Tait," and " Examples 

 upon the reading of a Circle or Circles of a Knot." Prof. 

 Tait gives a " Census of 8-fold and 9-fold Knotti- 

 ness," and a " Census of lo-fold Knottiness," with a special 

 treatment of amphicheirals. There is also a paper, " Ueber 

 algebraische Knoten,' by Prof. Fr. Meyer, of Tiibingen. 



Dr. Thomas Muir treats of subjects connected with 

 the theory of continued fractions and with the theory of 

 determinants. Dr. Muir constantly aims at the attainment 

 of simplicity through great generalization. An example 

 of this is given in his paper "On the Researches of 

 M. de Jonquiferes on Periodic Continued Fractions." He 

 points out that many of the theorems given by M. de 

 Jonqui&res are not new, and that the earlier ones are all 

 special cases of a more general theorem previously pub- 

 lished by Dr. Muir himself. He then proceeds to use 

 this general theorem for the purpose of giving unity to M. 

 de Jonquiere's work. 



Among other papers we note, " The Expansion of 

 Functions in terms of Linear, Cylindric, Spherical, and 

 Allied Functions," by Mr. P. Alexander ; a quaternion 

 investigation by Dr. G. Plarr of " The curve on one of 

 the co-ordinate planes which forms the outer limit of the 

 position of the point of contact of an ellipsoid which 

 always touches the three planes of reference ; " and a 

 note " On the Hessian," by Prof. Chrystal. M. Hermite 

 contributes a paper " Sur la Reduction des Intdgrales 

 Hyperelliptiques," and Prof. L. Cremona gives an 

 " Esempio del metodo di dedurre una superficie da una 

 figura piana." 



In a remarkable paper " On the Law of Inertia ; the 

 Principle of Chronometry ; and the Principle of Absolute 

 Clinural Rest, and of Absolute Rotation," Prof. James 

 Thomson treats of questions on the border-ground 

 between pure mathematics and physics. He discusses 

 " such motions of points in unmarked space, as can have 

 a reference frame relatively to which these motions are 

 rectilinear and are changeless in mutual rate." The 

 problem of finding a reference frame for a known set of 

 such points is worked out in another paper by the same 

 author by a method of mechanical adaptations, and Prof. 

 Tait has given a quaternion solution of it. Prof. 

 Thomson's law of inertia is the equivalent of Newton's 

 first and second laws of motion. The paper is one 

 which merits the perusal of all students of dynamics, and 

 it may be specially recommended for study to certain 

 classes of metaphysicians. 



