BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 



circuit, he discovered the superiority of wire over 

 chain as a conducting medium. 



Watt, James, iv, 14. Born at Greenock, Scot- 

 land, Jan. 19, 1736; died near Birmingham, Aug. 

 19, 1819. Celebrated English engineer and 

 mechanician, the perfecter of the practical steam 

 engine. Among his scientific achievements he 

 claimed to have first discovered the composition 

 of water. Englishmen credit Cavendish with this 

 discovery, but in France Watt's claim is very 

 generally accepted. 



Weber, E. H., iv, 263. Born at Wittenberg, 

 Prussia, June 24, 1795; died at Leipsic, Jan. 26, 

 1878. German physiologist. After exhaustive 

 experiments to test the effects of various nervous 

 stimuli, he reached conclusions which later Fech- 

 ner christened "Weber's fundamental law of psy- 

 cho-physics." 



Wedgwood, Josiah, iii, 206. Born at Burslem, 

 England, July 12, 1730; died near Newcastle-un- 

 der-Lynne, Jan. 3, 1795. Celebrated English 

 potter. Inventor of the clay pyrometer, which 

 first enabled scientists to gauge high tempera- 

 tures accurately. 



Weismann, August, iv, 179. Born at Frank- 

 fort-on-the-Main, Jan. 17, 1834. Noted German 

 zoologist. He promulgated a theory (in 1883) 

 which denies that individual variations are trans- 

 missible. This view antagonizes the Lamarckian 

 conception of acquired variations, which was gen- 

 erally conceded to complement the Darwinian 

 factor of natural selection in effecting the trans- 

 mutation of species. 



Wells, Dr. Horace, iv, 213. A dentist of Hart- 

 ford, Connecticut, who in 1844 administered ni- 



[1531 



