6 GERMANY IN SCIENCE 



light; of Huyghens, the Dutchman, who greatly advanced 

 the science of; optics, to which the immortal Galileo, an Ital- 

 ian, had already contributed much. The invention of achro- 

 matic lenses and of the reflecting telescope were advances 

 with which Germans had little, if anything, to do. The work 

 of our Franklin,, of .Cavendish, Coulomb, Galvani, and Volta 

 in the field of electricity; of Davy, Rumford, Carnot, and 

 Joule in thermodynamics, the confirmation by Young and 

 Fresnel of the undulatory theory of light; the demonstration 

 that by the spectrum of incandescent bodies it is possible to 

 determine their -composition, which was achieved by Dr. Dav- 

 id Alter, a physician of Allegheny County, years before 

 Kirchfyoff, the German, announced the same observation, al- 

 though Alter 's papers had been translated and published in 

 Germany; the experiments of Faraday, Oersted, and Joseph 

 Henry, of Draper, Langley, Rowland, and J. J. Thompson, of 

 Clerk-Maxwell, Sir William Ramsey, Henri Becquerel and 

 Marconi, all represent forward strides in physical science of 

 enormous importance to the world. None of these names are 

 those of Germans. The only really important contributions 

 to the science of pure physics made by Germans are attribut- 

 able to Clausius of Bonn, who shares with Rankine and 

 Thomson, Scotchmen, the honor of placing the science of ther- 

 modynamics upon a scientific foundation; to Frauenhofer, who 

 discovered the lines in the spectrum, which bear his name; to 

 Kirchhoff, who applied and amplified the discoveries of Alter; 

 to Helmholtz, who wrote upon the physiological effects of 

 sounpV; to Dr. Walther Nernst, whose work upon electrical 

 incandescence is well known; and to Roentgen, whose name 

 is associated with the rays, the utility of which in producing 

 skiagraphs he demonstrated. The actual contributions of 

 German thinkers to the science of pure physics are, in com- 

 parison with those made by the rest of the world, exceeding- 

 ly few. The great names in physics, which are German, 

 may be counted upon the fingers of one man's hands. 



When it comes to the practical application of physical sci- 

 ence in art and industry through mechanical processes and in- 



