September 6, 1900] 



NATURE 



449 



all kinds for the promotion of his material welfare, elaborated 

 systems of government fitted for the mmagement of great com- 

 munities, formulated economic principles, obtained an insight 

 into the laws of health, the causes of infective diseases, and the 

 means of controlling and preventing them. 



When we reflect that many of the most important discoveries 

 io abstract science and in its applications have been made 

 during the present century, and indeed since the British Asso- 

 ciation held its first meeting in the ancient capital of your county 

 sixty-nine years ago, we may look forward with confidence to 

 the future. Every advance in science provides a fresh platform 

 from which a new start can be made. The human intellect is 

 still in process of evolution. The power of application and of 

 concentration of thought for the elucidation of scientific prob- 

 lems is by no means exhausted. In science is no hereditary 

 aristocracy. The army of workers is recruited from all 

 classes. The natural ambition of even the private in 

 the ranks to maintain and increase the reputation of the 

 branch of knowledge which he cultivates affords an ample 



Iintee that the march of science is ever onwards, and justifies 

 proclaiming for the next century, as in the one fast ebbing 

 close, that Great is Science, and it will prevail. 



SECTION A. 



MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 



tNiNG Address by Joseph Larmor, M.A., D.Sc, 

 F.R.S., Pres. C.P.S., President of the Section, 



T is fitting that before entering upon the business of the 

 ion we should pause to take note of the losses which our 

 rtment of science has recently sustained. The fame of 

 Bertrand, apart from his official position as Secretary of the 

 French Academy of Sciences, was long ago universally estab- 

 lished by his classical treatise on the Infinitesimal Calculus : it 

 has been of late years sustained by the luminous exposition and 

 searching criticism of his books on the Theory of Probability 

 and Thermodynamics and Electricity. The debt which we owe 

 to that other veteran, G. Wiedemann, both on account of his 

 own researches, which take us back to the modern revival of 

 experimental physics, and for his great and indispensable 

 thesaurus of the science of electricity, cannot easily be over- 

 stated. By the death of Sophus Lie, following soon after his 

 return to a chair in his native country Norway, we have lost 

 one of the great constructive mathematicians of the century, 

 who has in various directions fundamentally expanded the 

 methods and conceptions of analysis by reverting to the foun- 

 tain of direct geometrical intuition. In Italy the death of 

 Beltrami has removed an investigator whose influence has been 

 equally marked on the theories of transcendental geometry and 

 on the progress of mathematical physics. In our own country 

 we have lost in D. E. Hughes one of the great scientific in- 

 ventors of the age ; while we specially deplore the removal, in 

 his early prime, of one who has recently been well known at 

 these meetings, Thomas Preston, whose experimental investiga- 

 tions on the relations between magnetism and light, combined 

 with his great powers of lucid exposition, marked out for him 

 a brilliant future. 



Perhaps the most important event of general scientific interest j 

 during the past year has been the definite undertaking of the 

 great task of the international co-ordination of scientific litera- 

 ture ; and it may be in some measure in the prolonged confer- 

 ences that were necessitated by that object that the recently 

 announced international federation of scientific academies has 

 had its origin. In the important task of rendering accessible 

 the stores of scientific knowledge, the British Association, and 

 in particular this Section of it, has played the part of pioneer. 

 Our annual volumes have long been classical, through the 

 splendid reports of the progress of the different branches of 

 knowledge that have been from time to time contributed to them 

 by the foremost British men of science ; and our work in this 

 direction has received the compliment of successful imitation 

 by the sister Associations on the Continent. 



The usual conferences connected with our department of 

 scientific activity have been this year notably augmented by the 

 very successful international congresses of mathematicians and of 

 physicists which met a few weeks ago in Paris. The three 

 volumes of reports on the progress of physical science during the 

 last ten years, for which we are indebted to the initiative of the I 

 French Physical Society, will provide an admirable conspectus j 



NO. 161O, VOL. 62] 



of the present trend of activity, and form a permanent record for 

 the history of our subject. 



Another very powerful auxiliary to progress is now being 

 rapidly providetl by the republication, in suitable form and within 

 reasonable time, of the collected works of the masters of our 

 science. We have quite recently received, in a large quarto 

 volume, the mass of most important unpublished work that was 

 left behind him by the late Prof. J. C. Adams ; the zealous care 

 of Prof. Sampson has worked up into order the more purely 

 astronomical part of the volume ; while the great undertaking, 

 spread over many years, of the complete determination of the 

 secular change of the magnetic condition of the earth, for which 

 the practical preparations had been set on foot by Gauss himself, 

 has been prepared for the press by Prof. W. G. Adams. By the 

 publication of the first volume of Lord Rayleigh's papers a series 

 of memoirs which have formed a main stimulus to the progress 

 of mathematical physics in this country during the past twenty 

 years has become generally accessible. The completed .series 

 will form a landmark for the end of the century that may l)e 

 compared with Young's " Lectures on Natural Philosophy " for 

 its beginning. 



The recent reconstruction of the University of London, and the 

 foundation of the University of Birmingham, will, it is to be hoped, 

 give greater freedom to the work of our University Colleges. , 

 The system of examinations has formed an admirable stimulus 

 to the effective acquisition of that general knowledge which is a 

 necessary part of all education. So long as the examiner recog- 

 nises that his function is a responsible and influential one, which 

 is to be taken seriously from the point of view of moulding the 

 teaching in places where external guidance is helpful, test by ex- 

 amination will remain a most valuable means of extending the 

 area of higher education. Except for workers in rapidly pro- 

 gressive branches of technical science, a broad education seems 

 Ijetter adapted to the purposes of life than special training over 

 a narrow range ; and it is difficult to see how a reasonably 

 elastic examination test can be considered as a hardship. But 

 the case is changed when preparation for a specialised scientific 

 profession, or mastery of the lines of attack in an unsolved 

 problem, is the object. The general education has then been . 

 presumably finished ; in expanding departments of knowledge, 

 variety rather than uniformity of training should be the aim, and 

 the genius of a great teacher should be allowed free play without 

 external trammels. It would appear that in this country we have 

 recently been liable to unduly mix up two methods. We have 

 been starting students on the special and jengthy, though very 

 instructive, processes which are known as original research at an 

 age when their time would be more profitably employed in 

 rapidly acquiring a broad basis of knowledge. As a result, we 

 have been extending the examination test from the general 

 knowledge to which it is admirably suited into the specialised 

 activity which is best left to the stimulus of personal interest. 

 Informal contact with competent advisers, themselves imbued 

 with the scientific spirit, who can point the way towards direct 

 appreciation of the works of the masters of the science, is 

 far more effective than detailed instruction at second hand, as 

 regards growing subjects that have not yet taken on an 

 authoritative form of exposition. Fortunately there seems to 

 be now no lack of such teachers to meet the requirements of 

 the technical colleges that are being established throughout the 

 country. 



The famous treatise which opened the modern era by treating 

 magnetism and electricity on a scientific basis appeared just 3CX> 

 years ago. The author, William Gilbert, M.D., of Colchester,, 

 passed from the Grammar School of his native town to St. John's 

 College, Cambridge : soon after taking his first degree, in 1560, 

 he became a Fellow of the College, and seems to have remained 

 in residence, and taken part in its affairs, for alwut ten years. 

 All through his subsequent career, both at Colchester and after- 

 wards at London, where he attained the highest position in 

 his profession, he was an exact and diligent explorer, first of 

 chemical and then of magnetic and electric phenomena. In the 

 words of the historian Hallam, writing in 1839, " in his Latin 

 treatise on the Magnet he not only collected all the knowledge 

 which others had possessed, but he became at once the father of 

 experimental philosophy in this island " ; and no demur would 

 be raised if Hallam's restriction to this country were removed. 

 Working nearly a century before the time when the astronomical 

 discoveries of Newton had originated the idea of attraction at a 

 distance, he established a complete formulation of the interac- 

 tion of magnets by what we now call the exploration of their 



