JANUARY 17, 1907] 
NATURE 377 
CORNELIUS O’SUELIVAN, F.R.S. 
HE death of Mr. Cornelius O'Sullivan, F.R.S., 
which took place on January 8, at the age of 
sixty-five, has removed from amongst us a worker 
of great originality who, during the past thirty-five 
years, made his mark in various branches of pure 
and applied chemistry connected more or less directly 
with the industrial processes of brewing. 
A native of Bandon, co. Cork, O’Sullivan de- 
veloped a taste for science at a very early age, and 
having obtained a scholarship at the Royal School 
of Mines went through the three years’ course with 
distinction, and became attached to the teaching staff 
of the Royal College of Chemistry, then in its old 
quarters in Oxford Street. In 1866 he became private 
assistant to Prof. A. W. von Hofmann, whom he 
accompanied to Berlin in that year. In the following 
year he entered the business of Messrs. Bass and Co. 
at Burton-on-Trent, where he ultimately became the 
head of the brewing and scientific staff, a post which 
he occupied up to the time of his death. 
When O’Sullivan entered the brewing business the 
new ideas and discoveries of Pasteur with regard to 
fermentation were beginning to exercise a marked 
influence on brewing practice, and there seemed some 
danger of the new science of bacteriology occupying 
the field to the exclusion of chemistry. It is the 
special merit of O'Sullivan that, although very re- 
ceptive of these new ideas, he clearly recognised that 
all the biological problems with which the brewer has 
to deal must ultimately be referred to the chemist, 
and he therefore set to work, in the first instance, to 
investigate the nature of starch and the mode in 
which it is transformed under the hydrolytic agencies 
of diastase and acids. In these researches O’Sullivan 
made use of the polarimeter, and by a combination of 
the optical method with that of cupric reduction he 
elaborated processes for a study of the gradual dis- 
integration of the starch molecule which have been 
employed by all subsequent workers. In following 
the course of the action of diastase on starch, he 
conclusively proved that the sugar which is formed 
is not, as was then generally believed, glucose, but 
a well-defined crystallisable biose, maltose, and that 
the dextrins which are simultaneously formed consist 
of several bodies differing amongst themselves by 
certain well-marked properties. His researches on the 
influence of temperature on the reaction led to certain 
valuable practical applications, with which every 
student of brewing technology is now familiar. The 
results of O’Sullivan’s worl: on starch were published 
in the Journal of the Chemical Society between 1872 
and 1879, and constitute a series of memoirs which 
are justly regarded as classical. 
O’Sullivan then turned his attention to the amylans 
and other carbohydrates of the cereals, and also ex- 
tended his researches to the gums of the arabin series 
and to gum tragacanth. Throughout the middle and 
later period of his life he studied the action of the 
enzyme invertase on cane-sugar, and in a remark- 
able memoir published on this subject, in collaboration 
with Tompson, there is a vast amount of information 
which seems destined some day to assist in finding 
a rational explanation of the mechanics of enzyme 
action. 4 
In 1884 the Chemical Society marked its appreci- 
ation of O’Sullivan’s work by awarding him the 
Longstaff medal, and in the following year he was 
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 
The varied life-work of O’Sullivan affords an excel- 
lent example of the brilliant results which can be 
attained by the close union of pure science and tech- 
nology, and of the constant reaction of one on the 
NO. 1042, VOL. 75] 
other. Of all our industries there is not one, with 
the possible exception of agriculture, which is able 
to suggest so many problems in chemistry, physics, 
and biology as the ancient industry of brewing, and 
no one understood this better than the subject of this 
brief notice. Of his fine personal qualities and of 
the influence he had on the younger workers in a 
field which he made specially his own this is not the 
place to speak; suffice it to say that his generous, 
warm-hearted Celtic nature endeared him to a large 
circle of friends who are now mourning his loss. 
NOTES. 
Tue council of the Royal Astronomical has 
awarded the gold medal of the society to Prof. E. W. 
Brown, F.R.S., professor of applied mathematics at Haver- 
ford College, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., for his researches in 
the lunar theory. 
Society 
Tue GO6ttingen Kdénigliche Gesellschaft der Wissen- 
schaften has elected the following foreign members :—Prof. 
H. A. Lorentz, Leyden; Prof. L. Luciani, Rome; Lord 
Rayleigh, Pres.R.S., and Prof. C. S. Sherrington, F.R.S. 
THE council of the Royal Geographical Society has 
elected Mr. Roosevelt, President of the United States, an 
honorary member of the society. President Roosevelt has 
intimated’ his acceptance of this distinction. 
Pror. E. L. Nicuots, professor of physics in Cornell 
University, has been elected president of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science for the meet- 
ing to be held next year at Chicago. 
M. Bovouet, director of technical instruction to the 
French Minister of Commerce, has been elected director 
of the Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers for a 
period of cight years from January 1 last, in succession 
to M. Chandéze, who has retired. 
We learn from the British Medical Journal that the 
French Government has asked the Pasteur Institute to 
undertake an inquiry as to the distribution of malaria in 
various centres of colonisation in Tunis, especially the 
Béja, Mateur, and Goubellat regions, and as to the means 
of checking the prevalence of the disease. 
Tue Geological Society of London will this year award 
its medals and funds as follows :—Wollaston medal to Prof. 
W. J. Sollas, F.R.S.; Murchison medal to Mr. Alfred 
Harker, F.R.S.; Lyell medal to Dr. J. F. Whiteaves, of 
Ottawa; Wollaston fund to Dr. Arthur Vaughan ; Murchi- 
son fund to Dr. Felix Oswald; Lyell fund to Mr. T. C. 
Cantrill and Mr. Thomas Sheppard; the Bigsby medal 
to Mr. A. W. Rogers, of the South African Museum, Cape 
Town. 
New York Unrversity has received a gift of about 
fifteen acres of land adjoining the south line of its grounds. 
The value of the property is, Science states, said to be 
between 40,0001. and 60,0001. From the same source we 
learn that Mr. Andrew Carnegie has given to the College 
of Physicians of Philadelphia 20,oo0l. toward the erection 
of its new building, on condition that a like sum be sub- 
scribed, of which 16,0001. has already been received. 
WE announce with regret the death of the Very Rey. 
Robert H. Story, principal of Glasgow University, on 
January 13. For twenty-seven years Dr. Story was minister 
of the parish of Roseneath, and in 1886 he was appointed 
to the professorship of ecclesiastical history in the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow. In 1898 he succeeded the Rev. Dr. 
