HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



physical science he occupied himself almost wholly 

 with profound discussions, of a highly mathematical 

 character, into hydrodynamics, or the motions of 

 fluids, whether liquid or aeriform ; into the nature of 

 the ether and its relations to electrodynamics and 

 thermodynamics ; into some of the phenomena of 

 light ; and into principles concerned in the move- 

 ments of atoms and lying at the root of mechanics. 

 He also applied his profound knowledge of the more 

 hidden physical movements to an explanation of 

 chemical phenomena, more especially as to the rela- 

 tion of these phenomena to the law of the conser- 

 vation of energy ; and, finally, he passed into the 

 region of the physics of certain meteorological pheno- 

 mena, such as the nature of clouds. It is remarkable, 

 as showing the vigour of his intellect, that he was 

 creative up to the year of his death. Year after 

 year he ventured higher and higher in the choice of 

 problems on which to exercise his powers, and 

 although he gave the results in his ordinary lectures, 

 the number of pupils, and indeed of physicists, 

 throughout the world, who could follow him, became 

 fewer and fewer. 



Helmholtz had transcendent gifts as a mathema- 

 tician. We have it on the authority of Du Bois 

 Reymond, that not long before he wrote the tract 

 on the conservation of energy, his younger friends 

 were astonished at his mathematical attainments and 

 at the width of his reading of the more famous 

 188 



