November 4, 19 15] 



NATURE 



26y 



NOTES. 



\\i: notice with deep reg^i'et the announcement of 

 the death, on November i, at sixty-seven years of age, 

 of Sir Arthur Riicker, F.R.S., principal of the Univer- 

 sity of London from 190 1 to 1908, and previously pro- 

 fessor of physics at the Royal College of Science, 

 South Kensington. 



The death is announced, on October 30, in his 

 eighty-fourth year, of Lord Welby, president of the 

 Roval Statistical Society, and for many years per- 

 manent secretary to the Treasury. 



The ninetieth illustrated Christmas course of juvenile 

 lectures, founded at the Royal Institution in 1826 by 

 Michael Faraday, will be delivered this year by Prof. 

 H. H. Turner, his title being "Wireless Messages from 

 the Stars." 



The director of the Meteorological Office reports that 

 information has been received from the Seismological 

 Observatory at Eskdalemuir, Scotland, of the record 

 of a large earthquake which occurred at 7 a.m. on 

 November i, in or near Japan. 



We learn from the Times that the Nobel Prize for 

 Medicine for 19 14, of the value of about 8000L, has 

 been awarded to Dr. Robert Barany, professor of 

 i otology in the University of Vienna, for his work on 

 the physiology and pathology of the vestibule of the 

 ir. The prize for medicine for 1915 is reserved until 

 lext year. 



Prof. Kamerlingh Onnes announces in the Nieuwe 

 uRotterdamsche Courant that he has received news 

 (from Vienna of the death of Prof. F. Hasenohrl, pro- 

 fessor of physics in the University of Vienna, who was 

 tilled in action on the Italian front. The deceased, 

 twho was a pupil of Boltzmann, began in 1899 an in- 

 jvestigation on the dielectric constants of liquefied 

 leases, in the cryogenic laboratory at Leyden. Having 

 [returned to Vienna, he became privat-dozent, and later 

 succeeded Boltzmann, whose collected papers he edited 

 •ith much care. Earlier in the war in Galicia, Prof. 

 [^Hasenohrl had been wounded in the shoulder, but 

 ifter a complete recovery he again went to the front, 

 rhere his lamented death occurred. 



The Naval Consultation Board appointed by national 



'ientific and engineering societies at the request of 



fehe secretary of the U.S. Navy, has approved a plan 



for the establishment of a research and experimental 



iboratory for the Navy. It is recommended that the 



iboratory should be situated on tide water of sufificient 



iepth to permit a "Dreadnought" to come to the 



:k. It should also be of complete equipment, to 



enable working models to be made and tested to 



iestruction. The Board suggests that the investment 



)r grounds, buildings, and equipment should total 



ipproximately i,ooo,oooZ. ; and the annual working 



expenses should be between 500,000/. and 6oo,oooi. 



A NOTE in Engineering for October 29 gives some 



particulars of the new monitors. Without accepting 



b technically accurate the somewhat picturesque details 



jublished in official accounts, it may be assumed that 



le Admiralty designers have succeeded in producing 



NO. 2401, VOL. 96] 



vessels with the heaviest of guns which are practically 

 immune from torpedo attack. Some mount 14-in. guns 

 in a central turret, others have one 92 in. bow and one 

 6-in. stern guns, and others, again, two 6-in. guns. 

 The 14-in. guns fire projectiles of £ ton weight, and 

 th(^ range is 15 miles. Our 6-in. gun " throws 100 lb. 

 of high explosive 12 miles without overreaching itself." 

 The vessels are not of great speed — this is not required. 

 Only six months elapsed from the time that the demand 

 for their design was made until they fired their first 

 shot. It is a great credit to all concerned, notably to 

 the workmen in the shipyards, that this need was so 

 promptly met. 



The Morning Post of November 2 publishes the 

 following message from its Paris correspondent re- 

 ferring to the close relations now possible between 

 science and the French Army : — By becoming Minister 

 of Public Instruction and Inventions Affecting National 

 Defence in the new French Cabinet, M. Painlev^ will, 

 it is hoped, be able to place the inventive skill of the 

 nation more directly at the disposal of the Ministry of 

 War. He has served for a considerable period as 

 President of the Inventions Committee, and during 

 his tenure of that office it became evident to him that 

 every effort ought to be made to organise scientific 

 skill and to co-ordinate effort. In his new capacity 

 he becomes the sole intermediary between the world 

 of science and the Army. Under the system now 

 established one of the ways in which the Ministry will 

 be useful to the country is that it enables the Army 

 whenever the need arises to appeal directly to men of 

 science for the solution of any scientific problem. 



The name of Dr. Philippe Hatt, whose death, at the 

 age of seventy-five, we regret to announce, will be 

 more familiar to the astronomers of the last genera- 

 tion than to those of the present. In the middle of the 

 last centur>-, when Government expeditions for scien- 

 tific purposes were frequent, M. Hatt rendered good 

 service. He organised and took part in the French Ex- 

 pedition to Wha Tonne, in the Malay Peninsula, where 

 the eclipse of 1S68 was successfully observed by Rayet, 

 Tisserand, and others. 1874 found him on the bleak, 

 inhospitable rock known as Campbell Island, to 

 observe the transit of Venus. With Andr^ he went to 

 the Rocky Mountains for the observation of the solar 

 eclipse of 1878, and four years later he had a prominent 

 place in the French Expedition to Chubut to observe 

 the second transit of Venus. Less sensational, but 

 equally meritorious, work M. Hatt achieved in the 

 course of his professional career as a hydrographic 

 engineer. So far back as 1866 he was entrusted with 

 the task of making a new survey of the coast of 

 Cambodia, and the lower course of the River Saigon. 

 At the time of the French annexation of the country 

 he explored the Gulf of Siam, and demonstrated the 

 value of Gahn-Ray Bay as the site of a commercial 

 port. Later he devoted himself to hydrographic work 

 on the French coast, to the triangulation of Corsica, 

 and the observation of tidal phenomena, concerning 

 which he produced some valuable memoirs. He was 

 elected in 1897 » member of the French Academy of 

 Sciences, in the section of geography and navigation » 

 in succession to M. Antoine d'Abbadie. 



