July io, 1919] 



NATURE 



;69 



of gases, and was led by this work to the dis- 

 covery of argon. Later still he wrote on the 

 constitution of the natural radiation from a heated 

 body, on the sensitiveness of the ear, and on 

 electric oscillations, in addition to taking up again 

 a great number of questions on which he had pre- 

 viously written, in order to complete the solution 

 of some problem hitherto only partially solved, or 

 to fill up gaps in our knowledge. 



It is impossible to look through the five volumes 

 of Lord Rayleigh's collected pap>ers, which have 

 already been issued, without being struck with 

 the vastness of the field over which his labours 

 extended, his thorough acquaintance with the 

 work of others, and the facility with which he 

 could bring together the loose threads of a series 

 of investigations and weave them into the con- 

 sistent fabric recognisable as part of Nature's 

 handiwork by " all them that have pleasure 

 therein." The tale of his scientific work cannot 

 be completed from his published papers. His 

 services on scientific committees have been innu- 

 merable and invaluable, and there are very few 

 of the younger men who came in contact with him 

 who do not owe him a debt of grsHtude for help 

 and encouragement in the face of difficulties which 

 seemed at the time insuperable. C. H. L. 



VROF. ADRIAN J. BROIVX, F.R.S. 



THE sudden tragic close of the life of Prof. 

 Adrian Brown on July 2, following the 

 decease, only three days previously, of his 

 wife, is a grievous shock to his many friends, and 

 a great loss to chemistJ^, on the biological side 

 in particular, as well as to the brewing industry. 

 We can ill afford to lose men of his quality ; 

 always rare, present-day conditions do not favour 

 their production. 



A younger brother of Dr. Horace Brown, his 

 early life was passed in Burton-on-Trent. He 

 received his first lessons in chemistry from his 

 brother, and was technically trained under 

 Frankland at the Royal College of Science, which 

 he entered soon after the school was established 

 at South Kensington by the removal there, from 

 Oxford Street, of the Royal College of Chemistry 

 together with most of the staff of the Royal 

 School of Mines from Jermyn Street. 



On leaving college he became private assistant 

 to Dr. Russell at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 

 1874 he was appointed chemist to Messrs. Salt 

 and Co., brewers, of Burton-on-Trent. In 1899 

 he accepted the charge of a new department of 

 the L'niversity of Birmingham devoted to the fer- 

 mentation industries — the first of its kind. He 

 filled this chair with conspicuous success, and was 

 still in office at the time of his death in his sixty- 

 seventh year. 



In the 'seventies Burton-on-Trent was a remark- 

 able centre of scientific activity, and full of in- 

 spiration for a young worker. Peter Griess was 

 steadily laying the foundations of the azo-colour 

 dyestuff industry, though nominally a brewing 

 NO. 2593, VOL. 103] 



chemist (at Allsopp's); Cornelius O'SulIivan, who 

 had accompanied Hofmann to Berlin, had re- 

 turned to England to act as chemical adviser to 

 Bass and Co., and was engaged on his pioneer 

 investigation of the hydrolytic cleavage products 

 of starch; and Horace Brown, at the brewery of 

 Worthington and Co., was giving substance to 

 the ideas communicated in Pasteur's "Etudes sur 

 la Bi^re. " These three men were leaders in an 

 eminently alert society. 



Plunged into such an atmosphere, and influ- 

 enced by heredity, Adrian Brown could not but 

 develop, but he did so gradually and on individual 

 lines; the scientific copyist was not then in vogue. 

 Turning his attention, naturally enough, to the 

 problems of fermentation, he specially studied 

 the oxidising organisms and the influence of 

 oxygen on fermentation. His first paper, dealing 

 with the action of Bacterium accti, was published 

 in 1886; in a later communication he described 

 the results obtained with another organism, 

 B. xylinum. In both cases he was able to show 

 that the organism influenced oxidation in a selec- 

 tive manner. In this work, which was entirely 

 original, he was far in advance of his time, and 

 its importance was not recognised — indeed, is not 

 yet recognised, notwithstanding Bertrand's later 

 work on the subject. 



Adrian Brown was the first to suggest that in 

 cases of hydrolysis by enzymes the catalyst enters 

 into combination with the hydrolyte. 



In 1907 he began the publication of a series of 

 remarkable observations made with a blue barley, 

 showing that in the outer skin of the grain there is 

 a differential septum impermeable by strong acids 

 and alkalis and by most salts but penetrable by 

 weak acids, ammonia and a large number of 

 neutral substances, such as the monohydric alco- 

 hols, chloroform, etc. This work led to his elec- 

 tion to the Royal Society in 1911. 



Although a man of retiring habits and full of 

 rnodesty, his personal charm of manner endeared 

 him to all his friends. He exercised a wide influ- 

 ence on account of his experience and judgment, 

 being much respected in his industrial circle. As 

 a teacher he was remarkably successful, owing 

 to his sympathetic attitude, his unlimited patience, 

 and his faculty of realising the difficulties of his 

 students. H. E. A. 



A 



THE TRANS-ATLANTIC FLIGHT OF THE 



DIRECT trans-Atlantic passage has been 

 accomplished by the rigid airship R 34, 

 which left East P'ortune at 1.42 a.m. on July 2 

 and arrived at Long Island, New York, at 2 p.m. 

 G.M.T. on July 6. The total distance flown was 

 approximately 3100 nautical miles, giving an 

 average speed of 33 land miles per hour. This low 

 figure is accounted for by the adverse winds which 

 were encountered, and also by the fact that the 

 commander. Major Scott, was sacrificing speed 

 for safety. Some difficulty was experienced at first 

 on account of the low altitude necessitated by the 



