342 



NATURE 



[May 19, 1910 



Corinth'ic. It reads as follows: — "The eclipse of the 

 sun was witnessed on board the Oceanic Company's 

 steamer Corinthic, 480 miles south-west of Hobart. 

 Totality lasted from 2h. 50m. to 2h. 54m. The corona 

 was unexpectedly structureless, being^ equally distri- 

 buted round the circumference. There were no pro- 

 minences, rays, plumes, or streamers. The chromo- 

 sphere was dark red and of exceptional depth." 



William J. S. Lockyer. 



SIR WILLIAM MUGGINS. K.C.B., O.M., F.R.S. 



ONE of the pioneers of the new era of astronomy 

 opened by the application of the spectroscope 

 and photographic plate to celestial bodies has just 

 passed into silence, and though the memorial formed 

 by his works remains with us, no new block can be 

 added or detail elaborated by the hand of its builder. 

 It is not given to many men of science to have their 

 scientific careers associated so closely with new 

 developments as was that of Sir William Huggins, 

 whose death on May 13, at eighty-six years of 

 age, we regret to record. It may almost be said 

 that he was present at the birth of celestial spectro- 

 scopy ; when he commenced his work nearly 

 fifty years ago, he had a virgin field of study before 

 him, so that " nearly every observation revealed a new 

 fact, and almost every night's work was red-lettered 

 by some discovery." It was inevitable that some lines 

 laid down in this early survey required modification 

 as more exact instruments and methods became avail- 

 able, but the observations served their purpose in 

 showing that new regions awaited exploration, and 

 Sir W'illiam Huggins lived to lead investigators into 

 the realm thus gained for science, and to stimulate 

 a new generation to study it in detail. 



In 1901, a year after Sir W'illiam Huggins had 

 been elected president of the Royal Society, an appre- 

 ciative account of his work was given by Prof. 

 Kayser in these columns as a contribution to our 

 series of "Scientific Worthies." He was then seventy- 

 seven years of age, and had crowned the edifice of 

 his scientific publications by the production of a 

 sumptuous "Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra." 

 In 1902 his achievements received the highest official 

 recognition by the bestowal upon him of the Order of 

 Merit. While president of the Royal Society from 

 1900 to 1905, he delivered four addresses in the course 

 of which he described some of the work which the 

 society has done, and is doing-, for the nation. Selec- 

 tions from these addresses, with a short history of the 

 Royal Society, were published in volume form in 

 1906, and the subjects with which they deal were 

 thus brought under the attention of a wider public 

 than that present at the anniversary meetings at 

 which thev were delivered. Two of the addresses 

 were concerned mainly with scientific education, and 

 the public interest excited by one of ,them led the 

 Royal Society to appoint a committee to consider the 

 subject and prepare a report, which was afterwards 

 sent to the existing universities of the United King- 

 dom, with a resolution adopted by the president and 

 council asking- that steps be taken to "ensure that 

 a knowledge of science is recognised in schools and 

 elsewhere as an essential part of general education." 

 It is a matter for regret that this manifesto, which 

 was a sequel to Sir William Huggins 's advocacy of 

 the claims of science in modern life, led to no definite 

 result. A fuller knowledge of the conditions at the 

 public schools and universities, and greater precision 

 in the recommendations of the committee, might have 

 gained for him a place among educational reformers 

 who see their causes triumphant. 



There is no need now to refer in much detail to 



NO. 2 1 16, VOL. 8;:] 



Sir William Huggins's activities in the domain of 

 astrophysics, for his work was surveyed in the 

 " Scientific Worthies " article mentioned already. He 

 began his spectroscopic studies with Prof. VV. A. 

 Miller in 1864, by the e.xamination of the spectra of 

 a few stars, with particular reference to the identifi- 

 cation of their chemical constituents. Nine or ten 

 terrestrial elements were found to exist in the atmo- 

 spheres of Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, and other 

 elements were suspected. While carrying on these 

 investigations, he submitted a planetary nebula in 

 Draco, close to the pole of the ecliptic, to a spectro- 

 scopic examination, and found the spectrum to con- 

 sist of three bright lines, the brightest of which— the 

 characteristic nebular line — he believed to be coin- 

 cident with a line due to nitrogen. This identification 

 was afterwards disproved, but there remains to his 

 credit the fact that he was the first to observe the 

 bright-line radiation of some nebula?. 



Sir William Huggins was also the first to apply 

 the Doppler-Fizeau principle to the measurement of 

 radial velocities. He showed in 1867 that motion in 

 the line of sight could be determined by measuring 

 the displacement of spectrum lines in a star or other 

 heavenly body ; but though his work, and that to 

 which it gave rise at the Royal Observatory, Green- 

 wich, demonstrated the feasibility of the method, the 

 results were too discordant to be of substantial ser- 

 vice to science. Not until Vogel applied photography 

 to the subject, about twenty years later, was real 

 success achieved, and the value of the principle in 

 astrophysical investigations realised. 



Photography had been used by Sir William 

 Huggins in cooperation with spectroscopy long before 

 Vogel showed the precision with which radial veloci- 

 ties could be determined by its aid. He was probably 

 the first to obtain a spectrograph of Sirius, in 1863. 

 using a wet plate, though he failed to secure any 

 impressions of lines in the record. After the inven- 

 tion of the gelatin dry plate, several years later, the 

 attempt to secure photographs of stellar spectra was 

 renewed, and success was attained. Using instru- 

 ments placed at his disposal by the Royal Society, he 

 photographed the ultra-violet series of hydrogen lines 

 in the spectra of six "white stars," this being the 

 first time the series had been revealed, either in 

 terrestrial or celestial chemistry. It is a little sur- 

 prising, therefore, that he did not anticipate Vogel 

 in the application of photography to the determina- 

 tions of radial velocities which have led to such 

 valuable additions to our knowledge of binary systems 

 and the gregarious movements of stars. 



Not so much is known, perhaps, of Sir William 

 Huggins's work in other astronomical directions as 

 of that in celestial spectroscopy. With Prof. Stone, 

 about 1870, he made some investigations with the 

 object of measuring the heat received from stars, 

 using a thermopile, and concluded that distinct indi- 

 cations of thermal effects due to stellar radiations 

 were obtained ; but the results are now known not 

 to be trustworthy. Twenty years later, Prof. Boys, 

 using his far more sensitive radiometer, was unable 

 to find any definite effects from the brightest stars, 

 and only when a more delicate radiometer was used 

 by Prof. Nichols in conjunction with the great tele- 

 scope at the Yerkes Observatory was it possible to 

 secure distinct deflections due to radiation from stars 

 like Vega and Arcturus. 



Such revision as this of early observations is, we 

 take it, a concomitant of scientific progress. How- 

 ever well an investigator may build, the iconoclast, 

 with superior equipment and deeper knowledge of 

 causes of weakness of conclusions, overthrows the 

 edifice and erects his own pillar in its place. There 



