484 



NATURE 



[August io, 19 i6 



tions " discovered by Rutherford were shown to 

 be inert gases of the arg-on type, and Ramsay, 

 having satisfied himself of this, enthusiastically 

 took up the study of the radium emanation, and 

 made an exhaustive study of its physical proper- 

 ties, largely in conjunction with Whytlaw Gray. 

 In his research on xenon his methods of gas mani- 

 pulation had had a severe test, two or three 

 cubic centimetres of gas being the total stock 

 available after working up an enormous quantity 

 of air. But in the case of the radium emanation, 

 only a small fraction of a cubic millimetre at most 

 can be obtained at a time, and the methods were 

 tried to the uttermost. The extraordinary amount 

 of information which these workers and also 

 Rutherford were enabled to obtain about the 

 physical constants of the new gas in approxi- 

 mately pure condition is one of the triumphs in the 

 investigation of minute amounts of matter. In 

 this research also the extraordinarily delicate 

 micro-balance, devised by Steele, found something 

 worthy of its powers. 



For many of the latter years of his life Ramsay 

 brought forward evidence to show that the energy 

 liberated in radio-active transformations was suffi- 

 ciently powerful to bring about the transmutation 

 of one element into another. But these and simi- 

 lar attempts to produce artificial transmutation by 

 radio-active and electrical agencies are not yet 

 accepted by the majority. The subject is under- 

 mined with pitfalls, and to history must be left the 

 final judgment on this thorny question. 



The writer's personal acquaintance with 

 Ramsay dates only from 1898, and his association 

 with him only from the time when his great work 

 on the rare gases of the atmosphere was com- 

 pleted. His views, therefore, can only be partial, 

 and as regards one of the most fruitful periods of 

 his life indirect. In 1898 a group of honours 

 candidates in white ties outside the chemical 

 laboratories at Oxford was joined by the distin- 

 guished examiner from London, whose discoveries 

 were upon everyone's lips. W'e were chaffed at 

 the state of our hands, yellow from a nitrification 

 set upon the previous day's examination, and we 

 were assured that we need not scruple to accept 

 an invitation to dinner, as the stains were quite 

 invisible by artificial light ! 



The instant popularity of such a man with his 

 juniors and students is not difficult to account for. 

 At University College he was looked up to by them 

 in a way that can scarcely be expressed. He was 

 at once genial, approachable, and great— any of 

 which alone is an infallible passport to the student's 

 heart — and he repaid their trust and affection with 

 a loyalty to them as complete as that of a Scottish 

 chieftain to his clan. But even among those who, 

 at one time or other, may have been sharply in 

 conflict with him — and among contemporary 

 chemists none probably have been the centre of 

 so much controversy- — there must be few who did 

 not feel the fascination of his personality, and are 

 not now among the multitude of friends and 

 admirers who feel his loss as personal and irre- 

 placeable. It may be worth recording, seeing the 

 stormy time through which he passed, that one 

 NO. 2441, VOL. 97] 



who had known him well all his life could say to 

 the writer that he had never heard a really unkind 

 thing said by Ramsay of any of his colleagues or 

 opponents. >rot only his personal friencjs and 

 whole-hearted admirers are to-day among those 

 who are feeling that " they loved the man and 

 revere his memory." F'rederick Soddv. 



It was in 1880 or 1881, very soon after Ramsay 

 had come to the Bristol Chair of Chemistry, that 

 late one very hot and sultry summer evening 

 a newly made friend, tennis-racquet in hand, 

 came to seek him in his private laboratory. " Ah, 

 I'm glad you've come. No, I'd not forgotten, but 

 I've had trouble with this and a long day of it> 

 but it is all right now, and I'll come." Across the 

 window of the narrow make-shift room of the old 

 building that served as the first home of the Uni- 

 versity College stretched the long length of a com- 

 plicated system of glass bulbs and tubes and mer- 

 cury pumps in which he was conducting a dis- 

 tillation for one of his vapour pressure investiga- 

 tions. At that moment some ill-annealed junc- 

 tion, perhaps too near a flame, cracked and gave 

 way ; air entered with a hiss and reversed the flow 

 of hot liquid ; another crack and then a crash — 

 for, though he sprang to save it, a large mercury 

 receiver broke and discharged its contents over 

 the edge of the table on to the floor, where most 

 of it disappeared between the ill-fitting boards. 

 "Well," thought the friend, "that will be the end 

 of this day's work." But he did not yet know 

 Ramsay, who, looking up with a rueful smile, 

 said: "I'm afraid this means no tennis for me 

 to-day." "What are you going to do? " "Take 

 up the floor and recover the mercury — and a dirty 

 job it will be." And so it proved; but by next 

 morning the mercury had been recovered and the 

 apparatus had been rebuilt and was at work again. 

 That was Ramsay at the age of twenty-eight, 

 this my first glimpse of the indomitable 

 energy which was one of the secrets of his noble 

 career. In the thirty-six years that have elapsed 

 since then it seemed to me that his instinct and 

 practice were always the same : so soon as any 

 demand for action came, to make up his mind 

 what to do and then to act at once. Ask any of 1 

 the hundreds of friends who have sought and ! 

 received his help and you will hear from all sides 

 how quickly as well as how generously the help ! 

 was given. ■ 



This energy in action was the outcome of a ' 

 remarkably healthy and vigorous physique, which 

 he knew how to attend to; and any challenge to ; 

 which in a feat of skill was accepted as an inten- 

 tional exercise. A fifty-mile bicycle ride left him 

 quite willing to walk another twenty miles. This 

 tireless physical vigour without doubt contributed 

 to the attainment of his well-known mechanical 

 skill in glass-blowing and to the steadiness of hand 

 and eye which underlay many of his great experi- 

 mental achievements. So, too, his quickness in 

 picking up foreign languages was partly due to his 

 fine and acute musical ear. Even the sense of 

 smell was for him an instrument of analvsis the 



