NoveMBER 6, 1913] 
. 
EDWARD NETTLESHIP, F.R.S. 
R. E. NETTLESHIP, whose death on October 
30 we have to deplore, was well known to 
the public as a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon, 
and to men of science as an enthusiastic worker on 
the subject of heredity. He was one of the six 
sons of Henry John Nettleship, solicitor, of 
Kettering. Three of his brothers became noted. 
The eldest, Henry, held the Corpus professorship 
of Latin at Oxford with great distinction. The 
second, John Trivett, was well known for his 
accurate and realistic pictures of wild animals, and 
was the author of the first serious study of 
Browning. ‘The youngest, Richard Lewis, was a 
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 
Edward Nettleship was born in 1845, and after 
a preliminary education at Kettering became a 
‘student of the Royal Agricultural College at 
Cirencester, and of the Royal Veterinary College. 
Though he qualified as a veterinary surgeon, he 
soon relinquished that branch, and studied at 
King’s College and the London Hospital Medical 
Schools, taking the Fellowship of the Royal 
College of Surgeons of England in 1870. He 
specialised in ophthalmic surgery at a time when 
most ophthalmic surgeons still practised general 
surgery. He was appointed surgeon to the 
South London Eye Hospital, but his real life-work 
was carried out at St. Thomas’s Hospital and 
the Moorfields Eye Hospital. 
_ At St. Thomas’s Hospital that remarkable per- 
sonality, Liebreich, who still lives an artistic life 
in Paris, had laid the foundation of an ophthalmic 
clinic. Nettleship continued his work, and 
brought it to a state of perfection previously un- 
equalled in England. At Moorfields he had been 
assistant to the late Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, 
where he rivalled his teacher and life-long friend 
‘in his enthusiasm for clinical work, and in his 
abounding inquisitiveness into the mysteries of 
eye diseases. 
_ Papers full of acute observation and accurately 
authenticated facts came rapidly and continuously 
from Nettleship’s pen. He thus built up a re- 
‘putation which ranks with that of the greatest 
‘ophthalmic clinicians of the past—Mackenzie of 
Glasgow, von Graefe of Berlin, and Sir William 
Bowman of London, the founders of modern clini- 
eal ophthalmology. His magnetic personality 
attracted many of the best students to his side, 
pe he thus founded a tradition for careful 
_ observation and accuracy of detail which is being 
carried on by his successors. He did not suffer 
_ fools gladly, and his somewhat brusque manner 
_ towards them kept his little band select, whilst it 
_ unfortunately aroused some enmity in those who 
__ had not the opportunity of testing intimately his 
sterling character and warm friendliness. He 
built up a very large private practice, one of his 
_ most distinguished patients being Mr. Gladstone, 
_ on whom he operated successfully for cataract. 
About fifteen years ago Nettleship retired from 
_ practice and settled down in his country house 
at Hindhead. It was not a retirement to ease and 
luxury, but merely a deviation into scientific work 
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NATURE 
297 
| little less laborious than his earlier work. He 
devoted himself especially to the study of here- 
dity, and his painstaking and illuminating re- 
searches in this subject require no other testi- 
monial than that they were rewarded by the 
Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1912. 
These are his greatest works, but he was full 
of lively interest in all that pertained to ophthal- 
mology. Much of his time and energy was given 
up to colour-vision, and he did most valuable 
service as a member of the departmental com- 
mittee of the Board of Trade on sight tests for 
the mercantile marine. 
Mr. Nettleship was somewhat reserved, and 
only those who gained his confidence and learnt 
to know him well succeeded in penetrating to the 
fires of friendship which glowed within him. He 
has passed away, leaving behind him a record 
of work which lives and will continue to live. 
J. Hersert Parsons. 
NOTES. 
At the meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
held on November 3, 1913, the following were elected 
honorary fellows :—Prof. Horace Lamb, F.R.S., pro- 
fessor of mathematics in the University of Man- 
chester; Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., 
formerly director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; 
Dr. G..E. Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Solar 
Observatory (Carnegie Institution of Washington); 
Prof. Emil C. Jungfleisch, Mem.Inst.Fr., professor of 
organic chemistry in the College of France, Paris; 
Prof. S. Ramén y Cajal, professor of histology and 
pathological anatomy in the University of Madrid; 
Prof. V. Volterra, professor of mathematics and 
physics in the University of Rome; Prof. G, -.R. 
Zeiller, Mem.Inst.Fr., professor of plant pal#ontology 
in the National Superior School of Mines, Paris. 
Tue Physical Society’s Annual Exhibition will be 
held. on Tuesday, December 16, at the Imperial Col- 
lege of Science, and will be open both in the afternoon 
and evening. 
ANNOUNCEMENT is made from Paris that Prof. 
Charles Richet, professor of physiology in the Univer- 
sity of Paris, and member of the Academy of Medicine, 
has been awarded the Nobel Prize for science. 
Tue eighty-eighth Christmas course of juvenile 
lectures, founded at the Royal Institution in 1826 by 
Michael Faraday, will be delivered this year by Prof. 
H. H. Turner, F.R.S., his title being ‘‘A Voyage in 
Space.” 
Tue brain of the late Prince Katsura, which, 
according to his wishes, has been removed to the 
Imperial University Museum in Tokio, was found 
to weigh 1600 grams—the same as that of Kant. 
Tue death is reported, in his seventy-ninth year, of 
Dr. P. R. Uhler, an American entomologist and geo- 
logist of repute. For three years he was an assistant to 
Prof. Louis Agassiz, at Harvard, and afterward ex- 
plored parts of the island of Hayti for him. Since 
