370 



NATURE 



[January 9, 1919 



Lincei, and on January 4 received representa 



ill. chief universities of Italy. We learn from the 



account "I the visit given by the Times corresp lenl 



at Rome thai the first to be presented were repre- 

 sentatives of the University of Rome, headed by the 

 rector, Prof. Tonelli. Signor Salandra, as president 

 of the faculty of law, read an address in Latin re- 

 • .Hinting the achievements of the President, and con- 

 ferring on him the degree of doctor in jurisprudence 

 (honoris causa). The diploma was then presented by 

 Prof. Tonelli. There followed representatives of the 

 University of Padua, headed by Prof. Lori, who con- 

 ferred on the President the degree of doctor of laws. 

 Next came the turn of the University of Bologna. 

 Mr. Wilson had already received a degree from the 

 university, but Prof. Galanli gave a special greeting 

 in the name of the- university. Last came the Marquis 

 Torrigiani, who, in the name of the University of 

 Florence, conferred on the President the degree of 

 doctor in letters. 



The Director of the British Museum (Natural His- 

 torv) has received the following letter from the 

 National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid :— 

 " Please let us congratulate very warmly your museum 

 on the end of the great war, so glorious an end for 

 your country and for the cause of universal freedom 

 and peace. — Believe us, sir, yours very friendly, 

 Ignacio Bolivar (director), Eduardo H. Pacheco, 

 Joaquin Gonzalez Hidalgo, Luis Lozano, Lucas F. 

 Navarro, Angel Cabrera, Antonio de Zulueta, Ricardo 

 Mercel, Candido Bolivar, and Romualdo Gonzales 

 Fragoso." The director of the Museo Nacional wishes 

 the letter to be taken, not as a mere formula of 

 courtesy, but as an expression of sincere feelings of 

 sympathy on the part of the signatories towards this 

 country. We feel sure that our readers will cordially 

 appreciate and reciprocate this friendly message from 

 Spain. 



The Faraday Society has arranged a general dis- 

 cussion on "The Present Position of the Theory of 

 lonisation," to be held on Tuesday, January 21, from 

 5 to 6.30 and from 8 to 10 p.m. in the rooms of the 

 Chemical Society, Burlington House, W.i. Sir J. J. 

 Thomson will preside over the discussion, which will 

 be opened by Prof. G. Senter. Among contributors of 

 papers will be Prof. S. Arrhenius (Stockholm) Prof. 

 S. F. Acree (Syracuse, U.S.A.), Capt. J. W. McBain, 

 Mr. W. R. Bousfield, Dr. E. Newberv, Dr. N. R. 

 Dhar (Paris), Dr. Henrv J. S. Sand,' Prof. A. W. 

 Porter, Dr. E. B. R. Prideaux, and Capt. J. R. 

 Partington. 



We notice with much regret the announcement of 

 the death on January 6, at sixty years of age, of Col. 

 Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States 

 of America, and distinguished in the scientific world 

 by his observations on big game and his work for the 

 establishment of bird reservations and other means of 

 conserving places and objects of natural beauty and 

 interest. 



The death is announced, in his eighty-ninth year, 

 of Dr. Thomas Buzzard, consulting physician to the 

 National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, 

 Queen Square, London ; ex-president of the Clinical, 

 Neurological, and Harveian Societies; a foreign corre- 

 sponding member of the SocUte 1 de Neurolgie of Paris; 

 and the author of many works on diseases of the 

 nervous system. 



News has just reached us of the death on October 1 

 last, in his sixty-first year, of the distinguished mathe- 

 matician-philosopher, Gaston Milhaud, professor at the 

 Sorbonne, Paris. Prof. Milhaud occupied an ah lost 

 NO. 2567, VOL. I02] 



unique position, indicated in the special subject for 

 which hi-, 1 hair was created by the Sorbonne in 1909, 

 "Historj oi Philosoph.3 in iis Relations with the 

 Sciences." His strong historical 3ensi made him 

 especially sympathetic as a philosopher, and enabled 



him almost instinctively to place himsell al another 

 philosopher's point of view — a rare intellectual gift. 

 His first published work, " Lecons sur les origines 



de la ci grecque;" a] ipeai ed in 1803, and m; 



the special direction of his studies. It was followed 

 in the next year by "L'Essai sur les conditions et les 

 limites de la certitude logique." This was his thesis 

 for the Doctorat es lettres, and aroused great inter' si, 

 pas ing through several editions. Prof. Milhaud is better 

 known in this country by his books " Les philosopher 

 iM'uiuetres de la Grece" and "Etudes sur la pens£e 

 scientifique chez les Grecs et les Moderncs." During 

 his last years he had been engaged on a special study 

 of Descartes. Portions of this have appeared from 

 time to time in reviews, and the whole, we hope, will 

 now be published. 



Count Hertling, German ex-Imperial Chancellor, 

 was one of the great political leaders who combined 

 philosophy as a profession with statesmanship. His 

 first professorship was at Bonn, and in 1880 he 

 became ausserordentliche professor of philosophv in 

 the University of Munich. His principal books are 

 " Materie und Form und die Definition der Seele bei 

 Aristoteles " (1871), " Ueber die Grenze der mechanische 

 Naturerklarung" (1875), "Albertus Magnus" (1880), 

 and "John Locke und die Schule von Cambridge" 

 (1892). He was also the author of numerous articles 

 on political philosophy. 



Owing to the exciting events which were happening 

 last year, the death of Marcel Deprez, one of the 

 greatest of electricians, on October 18 last, has almost 

 passed unnoticed in this country. In his early life 

 Deprez made many valuable researches by means of 

 various novel devices on the pressures developed in 

 cannons during explosion. It was not until 1S81, 

 however, when he was thirty-eight years old, that he 

 devoted himself to the application of electricity to 

 industrial purposes. In that year, in conjunction with 

 Carpentier, he patented the method of transmitting 

 power by high-tension electricity, using step-up and 

 step-down transformers. His profound faith in theorv 

 enabled him to surmount the many difficulties with 

 which the early pioneers of power transmission were 

 faced. Deprez was the first to prove that the method 

 was commercially feasible. His study of the curves 

 devised by John Hopkinson to explain the working of 

 a dynamo led him to the invention of the compound 

 winding by means of which the voltage of a dvnamo 

 can be maintained constant at al! loads. In con- 

 junction with d'Arsonval and Carpentier he invented 

 a series of measuring instruments which are in 

 common use in every country in the world. In 1S90 

 Deprez was elected professor of industrial electricity 

 at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. A long 

 illness and the war prevented him from completing 

 several important scientific and industrial researches 

 on which he was engaged. We unite with our French 

 confreres in paying homage to the memory of one 

 whose inventions have played such a notable part in 

 the industrial development of the world. 



The death at Tacoma, Washington, U.S.A., on 

 November 14, 1918, is announced of Prof. George 

 Francis Atkinson, head of the department of botany at 

 Cornell University since 1S96. Born in 1854, and 

 educated at Cornell, where he graduated in 1885, Prof. 

 Atkinson was appointed associate professor of crypto- 

 gamic botany at his own university in 1893. In 1894 



