December 4, 1902] 



NATURE 



105 



Cleveland Abbe, for meteorology ; Mr. William H. 

 Holmes, for anthropology ; and Mr. S. W. Stratton, for 

 physics. 



Owing to the absence of Mr. Rathbun, Dr. Remsen 

 served as chairman at a meeting of the committee held 

 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, April 15. 

 At this meeting, thefollowing resolution was unanimously 

 adopted : — 



" That the committee recommend to the secretary of 



the Smithsonian Institution that it is desirable that one 



of the Hodgkins gold medals be struck, and that it be 



awarded to J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge, England, for 

 his investigations on the conductivity of gases, especially 

 on the gases that compose the atmospheric air." 



The finding of the committee being approved by the 

 secretary, steps were at once taken to have the second 

 Hodgkins gold medal struck, under the personal super- 

 vision of its designer, M. J. C. Chaplain, of Paris. The 

 medal (one side of which is shown in the accompanying 

 photographic illustration) has recently been received by 

 the Institution, and has been dispatched to Prof. Thomson 

 through the Department of State. 



SIR WILLIAM ROBERTS-AUSTEN, K.C.B., 

 F.R.S. 



TDY the death of Sir William Roberts-Austen, which 

 -*-' occurred at his official residence in the Mint 

 on Saturday, November 22, metallurgical science has 

 to deplore the loss of one of its most distinguished repre- 

 sentatives. He had been in failing healih for some 

 months past, and had suffered from one or two sharp 

 attacks of illness during the last few years, but even his 

 most intimate friends, until a few days before his death, 

 were quite unprepared for the suddenness of his end. 



William Chandler Roberts, as he was formerly called, 

 was born in 1843. His father, George Roberts, was of 

 Welsh descent, whilst his mother, Maria Louisa, belonged 

 to the Kentish family of Chandler which intermarried 

 with the Austens. In 1885, at the request of his uncle, 

 the late Major Austen, J. P., of Haffenden and Cam- 

 borne, in Kent, he obtained Royal license to take the 

 name of Austen. 



At the age of eighteen, he entered the Royal School 



NO. I/27, VOL. 67] 



of Mines with the intention of being a mining engineer, 

 but after obtaining the associateship of the school he 

 became, in 1865, a private assistant to the late Prof. 

 Graham, then Master of the Mint, and was employed, 

 at the outset, mainly on the researches in inorganic 

 chemistry and on physical chemistry which continued to 

 occupy Graham until the end of his days. Graham died 

 in 1869, when the Department was reorganised in accord- 

 ance with the provisions of the Coinage Act of the fol- 

 lowing year. Under that Act, the Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer became " Master, Worker and Warden " of 

 the Royal Mint. No salary was attached to the office, 

 but it was provided that its duties should " be per- 

 formed and exercised by his sufficient deputy." In order 

 to provide for the efficient discharge of the scientific 

 work devolving on the Mint, a new post — that of 

 " chemist of the Mint" — was created, and Roberts was 

 selected to fill it, being appointed by Treasury minute of 

 January 7, 1870. 



On the death of Mr. Horace Seymour, the late 

 Deputy Master, in June last, Sir William Roberts-Austen 

 was appointed to fill the office ad interim, or until 

 his own official connection with the Mint should be 

 severed by resignation. This he had intended should 

 take effect in the spring of the coming year. It may be 

 said, therefore, that Sir William Roberts-Austen had, at 

 one time or other, filled every office in the Mint which a 

 man of his order could aspire to. No more con- 

 vincing testimony to the manner in which he discharged 

 his official duties, and no more eloquent proof of how he 

 acquitted himself under the great responsibilities of his 

 position, could be adduced than this single fact. 



Roberts-Austen was one of the most many-sided men 

 of his time. His intellectual activity found scope for itself 

 in many ways. He had an insatiable capacity for work 

 and he never spared himself. Those who knew him in- 

 timately frequently remonstrated with him on the manner 

 in which he incessantly made large drafts on his store of 

 mental and nervous power, with no thought of repose or 

 recuperation. It was rarely that he could be induced to 

 pay much heed to the warnings of his friends, declaring 

 that he found in the very variety of his avocations the 

 relaxation and rest which they desired him at times to 

 take. This was strikingly exemplified by the manner in 

 which he clung, with an interest amounting to affection, 

 to his position as professor of metallurgy in the Royal 

 School of Mines. Roberts-Austen always cherished, as 

 one of the most treasured memories of his life, the recol- 

 lection of his early association with the Royal School of 

 Mines. Although the Royal School of Mines is to-day 

 incorporated with the Royal College of Science, a fusion 

 of which Roberts- Austen entirely approved and which he 

 loyally supported, his colleagues on the council of the 

 school were more or less dimly conscious that deep down 

 in his mind, "at the back of his head," as the saying 

 goes, he was still apt to regard the school as a corporate 

 entity with a separate existence, with all the powers, 

 privileges and prestige which it enjoyed as a separate 

 entity in his old Jermyn Street days. There was probably 

 no one position he coveted more than its chair of metal- 

 lurgy, and no incident in his career which gave him a 

 greater sense of pleasure and satisfaction than his appoint- 

 ment, in 1880, to that chair in succession to the late Dr. 

 Percy. The feeling with which he regarded the school is 

 intelligible enough, for it is very human and sprang from 

 his very affection for it. It is akin to that which leads the 

 fond father or doting brother in his secret soul to resent the 

 removal of the daughter or the sister to a new home. 

 No amount of talk about "a larger potentiality for good," 

 "enlarged sphere of activity," "greater measure of ad- 

 vantages," &c, however willingly and sincerely assented 

 to, will entirely subdue and efface the feeling which in 

 the younger and more militant masculine members of a 

 family has been known to degenerate into a secret wish 



