January 19, 1905] 



NA TURE 



285 



FRIZE AWARDS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF 



EDINBURGH. 

 A T a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 

 ■^^ January 9 the prizes awarded by the council were 

 presented by the chairman, Prof. J. Geikie. We have 

 received the following particulars of the awards : — 



The Gunning Victoria Jubilee prize for 1900-4 was 

 awarded to Sir James Dewar, LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.S., &c., 

 for his researches on the liquefaction of gases, extending 

 over the last quarter of a century, and on the chemical and 

 physical properties of substances at low temperatures, 

 his earliest papers being published in the Transactions 

 and Proceedings of the society. 



In 1867 Mr. James Dewar read a paper to this society 

 on the oxidation of phenol to oxalic acid. This, his 

 first contribution to the aromatic compounds, was followed 

 by a more important one on the o.xidation of picoline, 

 which he gave to the British Association in 1868, and in 

 a fuller form to this society in 1870. In this he proposed 

 a graphic formula of pyridine, which expresses the relation 

 between the constitution of benzene and that of pyridine, 

 now universally recognised. 



Dewar 's experiments on the liquefaction of gases extend 

 over the last quarter of a century, and have culminated 

 in the production of liquid and solid hydrogen in large 

 quantities, so that as thirty-five years ago he studied the 

 chemical and physical properties of hydrogenium solidified 

 in palladium, he has now given us the properties of the 

 solid element, hydrogen itself. Having thus in his hands 

 the means of preparing large quantities of liquefied gases, 

 and having devised most ingenious arrangements for keep- 

 ing these very volatile liquids for a long time with only 

 a small loss from evaporation, he made good use of the 

 opportunity for examining the chemical and physical 

 properties of substances at extremely low temperatures. 

 The results of these inquiries are of the highest interest 

 and importance. For this long series of investigations in 

 chemistry and physics, characterised by ingenuity, skill, 

 and perseverance, and crowned with success, the council 

 has awarded to Sir James Dewar the Gunning Victoria 

 Jubilee prize. 



The Keith prize for 1901-3 was awarded to Sir William 

 Turner, K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., for his memoir 

 entitled " .A. Contribution to the Craniology of the People 

 of Scotland." published in the Transactions of the society, 

 and for his " Contribution to the Craniology of the People 

 of the Empire of India," parts i., ii., likewise published 

 in the Transactions of the society. 



These memoirs, important as they are, form a com- 

 paratively small part of the work which Sir William 

 Turner has done in the field of physical anthropology. 

 More especially should notice be taken of the two elaborate 

 reports which he published on the crania and other bones 

 of the human skeleton which were collected by the 

 Challenger Expedition. These reports are not only 

 valuable "on account of the information which they convey 

 regarding the physical characters of many races of man- 

 kind, but also because they establish methods of cranio- 

 logical and anthropometrical research which have very 

 generally been accepted in this country by workers in the 

 same field. 



Four great leaders have been chiefly instrumental in 

 developing that branch of science which has received the 

 name of physical anthropology : Broca in France, Huxley 

 and Flower in England, Turner in Scotland. 



The Makdougall-Brisbane prize for 1902-4 was awarded 

 to Mr. John Dougall, M.A., for his paper on an analytical 

 theory of the equilibrium of an isotropic elastic plate, 

 published in the Transactions of the society. 



The problem of the deformation of an isotropic elastic 

 plate under given forces has occupied the attention of 

 mathematicians from the time of Lam(5. The solution 

 given by Lam^ himself is merely formal ; the integrals 

 by which that solution is expressed are not only very 

 complicated, but are not convergent, and they do not 

 load to the approximate theory. 



NO. 1838, VOL. 71] 



In his memoir Mr. Dougall makes a new departure, and 

 develops a method that has important applications in other 

 branches of applied mathematics. By an exceedingly 

 skilful use of Cauchy's theory of contour integration, 

 certain integrals, which in Lamp's solution are not con- 

 vergent, are transformed into highly convergent series, 

 and the modifications which are necessary to secure con- 

 vergence lead at once to the most significant terms of 

 the solution. The theorem of Betti is applied to develop 

 a method, analogous to the method of Green's function 

 in the theory of the potential, by which the properties of 

 the solution for a finite plate can be deduced from that 

 for an infinite plate, and here, as elsewhere throughout 

 the memoir, numerous results are obtained which have 

 great value both for pure and for applied mathematics. 

 The memoir confirms the ordinary approximate theory, 

 but extends it in various directions ; for example, the 

 edge conditions given by Kirchhoff in correction of Poisson 

 are found directly from the mathematical investigation, 

 without the aid of any special physical hypothesis, and are 

 carried to a higher degree of appro.ximation than by 

 Kirchhoff himself. The memoir contains much acute 

 analysis, and strikes out a new method of treating the 

 problems of mathematical physics that seems likely to be 

 of great value in future investigations. 



The Neill prize for the period 1901-4 was awarded to 

 Prof. John Graham Kerr, M.A., for his researches on 

 Lepidosiren paradoxa, published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions of the Royal Society, London. 



This work includes an account of the embryological 

 material collected during an expedition specially organised 

 for the purpose to the Grand Chaco of South America in 

 the years 1896-7. The general biology and habits of 

 Lepidosiren are described, the external features of develop- 

 ment are fully dealt with, and in a discussion of the 

 general bearings of the phenomena considered reference 

 is made to, amongst other things, the relations of the 

 protosoma to the body of the vertebrate, to the origin 

 of the spiral valve, and to the morphological significance 

 of the external gills which it is suggested are the persist- 

 ing representatives of the organs from which the limbs 

 of vertebrates have been evolved. 



After the presentation of the prizes, Sir James 

 Dewar gave a lecture on the properties of liquid 

 air, with special reference to charcoal vacua, being a 

 sequel to a paper communicated to the society by Prof. 

 Tait and himself in 1875 (see Nature, vol. xif. p. 217). 

 Many of the familiar properties of liquid air were demon- 

 strated by a series of experiments. Of particular interest 

 were its use as a calorimeter and its employment in cool- 

 ing charcoal in a vacuum tube so as greatly to diminish 

 the density of the rarefied gas. By this means the tube 

 gradually passed through all the well known stages from 

 the ordinary bright discharge to the condition of evident 

 striation and so to the Rontgen ray stage, and finally to 

 the non-conducting state. When the liquid air was re- 

 moved the charcoal gradually heated up to the ordinary 

 temperature, and the tube passed back again through 

 the stages in the reverse order. The phosphorescence at 

 very low temperatures of certain substances not phosphor- 

 escent at ordinary temperatures was also demonstrated ; 

 also the production of luminous effects due to the electrifi- 

 cation of a certain crystal on being cooled down to the 

 temperature of liquid air. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



C.\MERiDGE. — Mr. R. H. Lock has been appointed 

 assistant curator of the herbarium for four years from 

 January i. He succeeds Mr. Vapp, who was some time 

 ago elected professor of botany at Aberystwyth. 



Prof. .Sorley has been appointed chairman of the ex- 

 aminers for the moral sciences tripos. 



The Sedgwick Museum Building Syndicate has issued 

 a final report, from which it appears that the total cost 



