HENRY A. ROWLAND 

 COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 



BY 



DR. THOMAS C. MENDENHALL 



[Delivered before an assembly of friends, Baltimore, October 26, 1901.] 



In reviewing the scientific work of Professor Kowland one is most 

 impressed by its originality. In quantity, as measured by printed page 

 or catalogue of titles, it has been exceeded by many of his contem- 

 poraries; in quality it is equalled by that of only a very, very small 

 group. The entire collection of his important papers does not exceed 

 thirty or forty in number and his unimportant papers were few. When, 

 at the unprecedentedly early age of thirty-three years, he was elected 

 to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the list of his 

 published contributions to science did not contain over a dozen titles, 

 but any one of not less than a half-dozen of these, including what may 

 properly be called his very first original investigation, was of such 

 quality as to fully entitle him to the distinction then conferred. 



Fortunately for him, and for science as well, he liijed during a period 

 of almost unparalleled intellectual activity, and his work was done 

 during the last quarter of that century to which we shall long turn 

 with admiration and wonder. During these twenty-five years the num- 

 ber of industrious cultivators of his own favorite field increased enor- 

 mously, due in large measure to the stimulating effect of his own enthu- 

 siasm, and while there was only here and there one possessed of the 

 divine afflatus of true genius, there were many ready to labor most assid- 

 uously in fostering the growth, development, and final fruition of germs 

 which genius stopped only to plant. A proper estimate of the magni- 

 tude and extent of Eowland's work would require, therefore, a careful 

 examination, analytical and historical, of the entire mass of contribu- 

 tions to physical science during the past twenty-five years, many of 

 his own being fundamental in character and far-reaching in their influ- 

 ence upon the trend of thought, in theory and in practice. But it was 

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