II2 
NATURE 
[ DECEMBER 3, 1896 
Although biographical notices of all will be found in the 
Proceedings, there are some to whose labours I may make brief 
reference to-day. 
Sir William Grove presented the rare spectacle of steady and 
distinguished devotion to science in spite of the claims of an 
exacting profession, Grove was an eminent lawyer. Called to 
the bar in 1835, he was for some time kept from active work by 
ill-health ; but he subsequently acquired a considerable practice, 
and becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1853, was for some years the 
leader of the South Wales Circuit. His practice was mainly in 
patent cases, and the reputation he obtained in that field led to 
his being appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the 
Patent Laws. His work as an advocate was, however, by no 
means confined to such matters; he was one of the counsel— 
Sergeant Shee and Dr. Kenealy being the others—who defended 
the Rugeley poisoner, William Palmer, and he was engaged in 
many other cazses célébres. 
The eminent position to which he had risen at the bar led to 
his appointment in November 1871, as a Judge of the old Court 
of Common Pleas, a post which in 1875 was converted by the 
Judicature Act into that of a Judge of the High Court. This 
office he held until his retirement in 1887, when he became a 
member of the Privy Council. 
Throughout the greater part of his long and distinguished 
legal career, Grove’s love of science impelled him to devote a 
large share of his energies to its pursuit. It is remarkable that 
his first paper. which was communicated to the British Associa- 
tion in 1839, and which also appeared in the Coweples rendus, and 
in Poggendorff's Azalen, contained a description of the 
*¢ Grove’s cell,” which was afterwards used in every physical 
laboratory in the world. This was succeeded by a long series of 
memoirs, chiefly on electrical subjects, among which one of the 
best known is that on the gas battery. In 1842 he delivered, at 
the London Institution, an address which was, in the following 
year, developed into the celebrated series of lectures: ‘*‘On the 
Correlation of Physical Forces.” In these he discussed what we 
should now call the transformations of energy, and, though Prof. 
Tait, in his ‘‘ Historical Sketch of the Science of Energy” 
(‘‘ Thermodynamics,” p. 58), assigns precedence in calling ‘‘ atten- 
tion to the generality of such transformations”? to Mrs. Somer- 
ville, there can be no doubt that Grove was an independent and 
very advanced thinker on that subject. 
For many years Sir William Grove took a very prominent 
part in the affairs of the Royal Society, and was one of the 
most active promoters of the reform of its constitution, which 
took place in 1847. It is largely to his efforts that we owe our 
present system of electing only a specified number of Fellows 
in each year. He was also one of the founders of the ** Philo- 
sophical Club,” and was the last survivor of the original 
members. { 
He was President of the British Association in 1866, and, in 
the course of his address, observed: ‘‘ The Kew Observatory, 
the petted child of the British Association, may possibly become 
an important national establishment ; and, if so, while it will 
not, I trust, lose its character of a home of untrammelled 
physical research, it will have superadded some of the functions 
of the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, with 
a staff of skilful and experienced observers” (‘‘ Correlation and 
Continuity.” Fifth Edition, 1867, p. 278). Although the 
British Association long ago handed over the care of its 
*‘netted child” to a Committee appointed by the Royal 
Society, the Society and the Association have lately appointed 
a joint Committee to urge the Government to supply the funds 
for converting the Kew Observatory into a ‘‘ national establish- 
ment ” similar to the Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg. We are 
thus striving to realise to-day the suggestion thrown out, thirty 
years ago, by Grove. 
In Sir Joseph Prestwich we have lost almost the last link that 
remained which connected geologists of the present day with 
the founders of the science in the first half of this century. To 
him we are indebted, not only for the first comprehensive 
classification of the tertiary beds of this country—to several of 
which he assigned the names by which they will henceforth be 
universally known—but, also, for their correlation with the 
strata of the Paris Basin. To him, also, is due the credit of 
having been the first to establish the authenticity of the remains 
of human workmanship found in the drift-deposits of the valley 
of the Somme, and of thus having laid secure foundations on 
which arguments as to the extreme antiquity of man upon the 
earth may be based. In France his name was known and 
NO. 1414, VOL. 55] 
| 
respected as much as in England, and it would be hard to say 
how much of the advance in geological knowledge during the 
last sixty years was not due to his unintcrmitted labours, which 
extended over the whole of that period. 
The earliest scientific investigation of Armand Hippolyte 
Louis Fizeau was on the use of bromine in photography, and 
was published in 1841. He will always be remembered as the 
first who carried out experiments designed to measure the 
velocity of light produced by a terrestrial source, and travelling 
through a comparatively small distance near the surface of the 
earth. These observations, made in 1849, were very difficult, 
but the velocity deduced from them differs by only about 5 per 
cent. from the mean of all the best modern results. The value 
of the method employed is attested by the fact that a quarter of 
a century afterwards it was adopted by M. Cornu, and that with 
the improved apparatus employed by him it gave results of the 
highest accuracy. 
A few years afterwards Fizeau performed another classical 
experiment, by which he measured the change in the velocity of 
light produced by the motion of the medium in which it travels. 
He also devised an extremely delicate method (based on the: 
interference of light) of determining the coefficients of thermal: 
expansion of small bodies, such as crystals. The instrament he: 
designed has been carefully studied by the Bureau International 
des Poids et des Mesures, with very satisfactory results. 
On account of these and other researches, M. Fizeau has, for 
nearly half a century, occupied a conspicuous position among 
European physicists. He was awarded the Rumford Medal in 
1866, and became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 
1875. 
Our distinguished Foreign Member, Prof. Hubert Anson 
Newton, Senior Professor of Mathematics at the Yale Univer- 
sity, New Haven, died at his home in New Haven on August 12 
last. He was born at Sherbourne, in the State of New York, 
in 1830; studied at Yale College, where he graduated in 1850, 
and was called to the Chair of Mathematics in the University at 
the early age of twenty-five. 
On the organisation of the Observatory of the University in 
1882, Prof. Newton was appointed Director; but though he 
resigned this position in 1884, the whole policy and success of 
the Observatory ever since, and, indeed, its very existence, are 
in no small measure due to his warm interest and untiring 
efforts. 
Prof. Newton’s name will ever remain associated with his 
important researches on Meteor Astronomy, beginning as early 
as 1860; and with his inquiry into the possible capture of 
comets by Jupiter and other planets. His historical investig- 
ations, and discussions of the original accounts, showed that the 
phenomena of meteor showers are of a permanent character, and 
come within the range of Celestial Dynamics, and that predic- 
tions of returning meteoric displays are possible. 
Prof. Newton was President of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science in 1885, and was for many years 
an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Science. He 
was a man of noble character, held in universal esteem, and 
greatly beloved by all those to whom he was personally known. 
The death of August Kekulé will be felt as a severe loss to 
chemical science all over the world. Not only did his great 
activity in original research enrich organic chemistry with many 
new and interesting compounds, but his announcement of the 
tetradic valency of carbon, and, especially, his theoretical con- 
ception of the benzene ring, gave an impulse to the study of 
structural chemistry which has introduced order into the vast 
array of organic compounds, both of the alcoholic and aromatic 
types, and has not, even yet, expendeditself. In recognition of 
his lifelong work, the Council of the Royal Society awarded 
Prof. Kekulé the Copley Medal in 1885. 
Another Foreign Member who has passed away from us during 
the year is the distinguished mineralogist and geologist, M. 
Daubrée. After leaving the Ecole Polytechnique in 1832, he 
was sent on a mission to investigate the modes of occurrence of 
tin-ore in Cornwall and on the continent. His reports showed 
such ability that he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy and 
Geology at Strasburg, at the age of twenty-five; afterwards 
(1861-2) he became Professor of Geology at the Musée d Histoire 
Naturelle at Paris, and at the same time Professor of Mineralogy 
at the Ecole des Mines; in the same year he succeeded; to the 
Chair at the Institut vacated by M. Cordier. From 1872 to 
1884, when the rules of the Service made retirement by reason of 
age compulsory, he acted as Director of the Ecole ces Mines. 
