: 
SEPTEMBER 18, 1913]- 
vital interest to Birmingham); the anesthetics 
report in Section I; and the modern university 
discussion in Section L. 
The great popularity of these discussions has 
again emphasised the fact that the average 
member does not come to hear isolated papers of 
miscellaneous interest. It more than ever throws 
upon the recorder of each section the responsibility 
of grouping its papers according to their natural 
affinities. This seems to be the only chance 
which the isolated paper has of surviving at the 
British Association meetings. The numerous 
facilities now available for publication render it 
less and less necessary to look to the British 
Association for a platform from which to announce 
discoveries, and the practice, so common in the 
earlier days, is now largely in abeyance. But for 
bringing like-minded people together to discuss 
matters of scientific interest, for gauging the 
trend of opinion on matters of controversy, and 
for focussing public opinion on matters of impor- 
tance to the commonweal, the British Association 
is pre-eminently useful, and the Birmingham 
gathering has shown that it is not likely to 
abandon that function for many years to come. 
Bm: E., EF. 
At an Honorary Degree Congregation of the Uni- 
versity of Birmingham, on Thursday, September 11, 
some distinguished foreigners received honorary 
degrees, and the following speeches were made by the 
Principal in presenting them to the Vice-Chancellor :— 
Dr. Arrhenius. 
Director of the Nobel Institute for Physics and 
Chemistry, at Stockholm, fellow of the Swedish 
Academy of Sciences, and foreign member of our own 
Royal Society. The courageous way in which Dr. 
Arrhenius applied the theory of electrolytic dissocia- 
tion to a quantitative study of chemical reactions has 
profoundly modified the trend of chemical science 
during the past thirty years, enlarging the scope of 
chemical investigation, harmonising previously dis- 
connected facts, and bringing an_ ever-increasing 
number of chemical phenomena within the range of 
quantitative and mathematical treatment. He is thus 
one of the most prominent of the founders of modern 
physical chemistry, the principles of which he has even 
applied, with singular success, to some of the most 
subtle phenomena of organic life. Recently his writ- 
ings on cosmogony have aroused wide interest; terres- 
trial electricity and the aurora have yielded to him 
some of their secrets; and his speculations on worlds 
in the making are more than interesting and sugges- 
tive. A man of genius, and one of the founders of 
physical chemistry, I present for the honorary degree 
of doctor of laws, Svante August Arrhenius. 
Madame Curie. 
The discoverer of radium, director of the Physical 
Laboratory at the Sorbonne, and member of the Im- 
perial Academy of Sciences at Cracow. All the world 
knows how Madame Curie (coming from Warsaw as 
Marie Sklodowska to work in Paris), inspired by the 
spontaneous radio-activity newly discovered by Bec- 
querel, began in 1896 a metrical examination of the 
radio-activity of minerals of all kinds; and how, when 
a uranium residue showed a value larger than could 
have been expected from its uranium content, she, 
with exemplary skill and perseverance, worked down 
NO. 2290, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 67 
some tons of this material (given her by the Austrian 
Government on the instigation of Prof. Suess), chemic- 
ally dividing it and retaining always the more radio- 
active portion, until she obtained evidence first of a 
new element which she christened polonium, in 
memory of her own country, and then after months 
of labour succeeded in isolating a few grains of the 
other and more permanent substance now so famous— 
a substance which not only exhibits physical energy in 
a new form, but is likely to be of service to suffering 
humanity. Of the metallic base of this substance she 
determined the atomic weight, finding a place for it 
in Mendeléeff’s series; and with the aid of her hus- 
band, whose lamentable death was so great a blow 
to science, she proceeded to discover many of its 
singular properties, some of them so extraordinary as 
to rivet the attention of the world. Subsequent 
workers engaged in the determination of numbers 
belonging to either of her special elements, radium 
and polonium, have sought her advice, and it has 
proved of the utmost value. I have now the honour 
of presenting for our ‘honorary degree the greatest 
woman of science of all time, Marie Sklodowska 
Curie. 
Prof. Dr. Keibel. 
The professor of anatomy in the University of Frei- 
burg is the leading authority on the development of 
man and the embryology of vertebrates. He originated 
the international standards used in estimating embryo- 
logical data, and through his classical work on com- 
parative development he has reformed anatomical 
teaching by the infusion of developmental ideas. His 
important contributions to anatomical knowledge and 
method are widely known and highly esteemed, but 
nowhere more heartily and. cordially than in the 
anatomical department of this University. Held in 
affectionate esteem by his colleagues, and directing 
one of the largest schools of anatomy in Germany, 
this eminent embryologist has been invited to receive 
our honorary degree, and I present to you Franz Karl 
Julius Keibel. 
Prof. H. A. Lorentz. 
To the great school of mathematical physicists of 
the last and present centuries we in England have 
proudly contributed even more than our share; but 
we recognise in the professor of physics in the Univer- 
sity of Leyden a contemporary worker worthy to rank 
with our greatest. Prof. Lorentz has extended the 
work of Clerk Maxwell into the recently explored 
region of electrons, and has developed in the mole- 
cular direction the Maxwellian theory of electro- 
dynamics. He is a chief authority on the behaviour 
of material bodies moving through the zther of space, 
and he has adopted and reduced to order many of the 
progeny resulting from the fertile marriage of elec- 
tricity and light. A specially interesting magneto- 
optic phenomenon, experimentally discovered by his 
countryman, Zeeman, of Amsterdam, received at his 
hands its brilliant and satisfying interpretation; an 
interpretation clinched by predictions of what, on the 
electric theory of radiation, ought additionally to be 
observed—predictions which were speedily verified. 
The Zeeman phenomenon thus interpreted not only 
gives information as to the intimate structure of vari- 
ous elemental atoms, but, in the hands of the great 
American astronomers, has shown that sun-spots are 
electric cyclones of high magnetic power, and is likely 
further to contribute to our knowledge of solar and 
stellar constitution. As a great authority on electron 
theory, and one whose name will for ever be asso- 
ciated with the now nascent electrical theory of matter, 
I present to you the distinguished mathematical 
physicist, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. 
