524 



NATURE 



[April 22, 1922 



extended the conception of molecular association in 

 liquids. He devised new methods of determining the 

 molecular weights of substances in the liquid state and 

 at the critical point. He attacked the study of molec- 

 ular dissymmetry, and traced the connection between 

 optical activity and homology in liquids, between 

 isomerism of position and rotatory power, and with the 

 aid of his pupils he accumulated a great mass of experi- 

 mental material which served to extend and substan- 

 tiate his generalisations. 



In 1903 Guye turned his attention to the study of 

 atomic weights, and, in particular, to a critical examina- 

 tion of the experimental basis upon which these magni- 

 tudes rest. He thereby followed and perpetuated a 

 tradition with which the fame of the Geneva school of 

 chemistry, as personified by Marignac, will always be 

 connected. Practically the greater number of the 100 

 contributions to the literature of chemistry which we 

 owe to Guye's pen during the past twenty years are 

 devoted to this subject, upon which he lavished all the 

 powers of his matured intelligence, his experience, 

 ingenuity, and manipulative skill. Thanks to his 

 organising capacity and the ability and enthusiasm of 

 his collaborators, we have been furnished with a series 

 of fiduciary values which are probably among the best 

 determined of physical constants, in which every 

 known source of error has been rigorously scrutinised, 

 and, so far as possible, eliminated. Naturally the 

 trend of modern developments of ideas concerning the 

 essential nature of the elements, and their fundamental 

 relations and possible interdependence, attracted Guye's 

 alert intelligence, and at the Brussels meeting of the 

 International Conference in June last he pointed out 

 their significance in connection with the proposed re- 

 organisation of the work of the International Committee 

 on Atomic Weights, of which he was an enthusiastic 

 advocate, and on which, had he lived, he would cer- 

 tainly have made his influence felt as a member. 



It might be supposed from Guye's mental character- 

 istics, and from the nature of his studies, that he would 

 have little sympathy with the technical applications of 

 chemistry. No such surmise could be further from the 

 truth. Although not a professed technologist, he had 

 a considerable knowledge of manufacturing chemistry, 

 and he enjoyed the confidence and esteem of the leaders 

 of chemical industry throughout Switzerland, to whom 

 he was always accessible, and by whom his counsel and 

 advice were highly appreciated. His name will always 

 be associated with the extraordinary development of 

 electrochemical synthesis in Switzerland, to which his 

 lectures and writings largely contributed. 



Guye exercised great influence in scientific circles in 

 Geneva, and took a leading part in the organisation of 

 Swiss science. He presided over the Swiss Physical and 

 Natural History Society, was a member of the central 

 Committee of the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, 

 and president of the Swiss Chemical Society and of the 

 Council of Swiss Chemistry. In 1903 he established the 

 Journal de Chimie physique, in which the greater number 

 of the communications from his laboratory after that 

 year were published, and he was mainly instrumental 

 in placing Helvetica Chimica Acta — now the leading 

 chemical journal in Switzerland — upon a sound and 

 permanent foundation. 



Guye's merits as a man of science were widely recog- 



NO. 2738, VOL. 109] 



nised. He was a member of the Scientific Academies of 

 Petrograd, Madrid, and Bucharest, an honorary member 

 of the Chemical Societies of France and England, a 

 corresponding member of the French Institute, and a 

 foreign associate of the Reale Accademia dei Lincei, and 

 he shares with his countryman Marignac the honour of 

 being a Davy medallist of the Royal Society. To the 

 great regret of his many friends in England, the illness 

 which ended in his death prevented him from coming to 

 London to receive the medal in person. 



He has another association with the memory of 

 Davy, who died at Geneva, which British chemists 

 will not forget. They are grateful to Guye for his 

 pious care of the tomb which holds the remains of the 

 great chemist. 



T. E. Thorpe. 



Prof. W. B. Bottomley. 



Prof. William B. Bottomley, Emeritus Professor 

 of Botany at King's College, University of London, died 

 at Huddersfield on March 24, aged 58, after a long and 

 trying illness which began in April 1918 with a seizure 

 resulting from thrombosis. During the four succeed- 

 ing years these seizures returned at intervals until 

 the end. 



Prof. Bottomley was born at Apperley Bridge, Leeds, 

 on December 26, 1863, and was educated at the Royal 

 Grammar School, Lancaster, and at King's College, 

 Cambridge. He then studied at Heidelberg, where he 

 received the Ph.D. degree. He was lecturer in biology 

 at St. Mary's Hospital from 1886 to 1891. In the latter 

 year he was appointed professor of biology at the Royal 

 Veterinary College, and at the same time served as 

 assistant in botany to Prof. Oliver at University College, 

 London, and as a Cambridge University Extension 

 lecturer. In 1893 he was appointed to the professor- 

 ship of botany at King's College, London, which post 

 he held until his resignation in 1920. 



In 1905 Prof. Bottomley made a journey round the 

 world in connection with University Extension work. 

 He did a great deal of extra-mural lecturing under 

 various auspices, and was well known as an excellent 

 lecturer before either a scientific or a popular 

 audience. 



Prof. Bottomley's chief scientific interests were in 

 connection with plant nutrition and the relation of 

 these problems to agriculture. Towards the end of the 

 nineteenth century he actively concerned himself with 

 various co-operative agricultural movements, such as 

 the Agricultural Banks Association and the English 

 Land Colonisation Society. He was a man of great 

 enthusiasms, and it is much to be regretted that he was 

 unable to complete the important work with which his 

 investigations were concerned. His name will always 

 find a place in the history of plant nutrition, along with 

 those of Boussingault, Lawes, and others. His most 

 important contribution to the subject of plant nutrition 

 was probably the discovery of what he called auxi- 

 mones, or growth-promoting substances, in materials 

 such as peat which had been subjected to the action 

 of nitrifying bacteria. The acidity of the raw peat had 

 first to be neutralised by the action of ammonifying 

 organisms. Experiments at Kew and the Imperial 



