6l2 



NA TURE 



[April 26, 1906 



his work was henceforth mainly directed to that sub- 

 ject. He spent his vacations at the laboratory of the 

 Marine Biological Association at Plymouth and in the 

 Zoological Laboratory at Naples, and devoted himself 

 to laborious and systematic measurements of the parts 

 of various marine organisms. These researches were 

 continued with increased vigour at University College, 

 London, where in 1891 he succeeded Prof. Ray 

 Lankester as Jodrell professor of zoology. Here he 

 entirely fulfilled the expectations which had been 

 formed of him at Cambridge. Effective and enthusi- 

 astic as a teacher, he soon gathered around him a bodv 

 of young workers whom he inspired by his own 

 intensive fire. 



During his career at University College he played 

 a leading part in initiating the changes which, after 

 some set-backs, resulted in the recent reorganisation 

 of the University of London as a teaching body. In 

 the completion of this most important work he was 

 debarred from active participation, for in 1899 he was 

 appointed the Linacre professor of comparative 

 anatomy in the University of Oxford. 



At Oxford he devoted himself with signal success 

 to the duties of his professorship, paying special 

 attention to the subject of variation. He again formed 

 the centre of an active school of research, and 

 founded in conjunction with Prof. Karl Pearson the 

 journal Biometrika to advance the subject which he 

 had so much at heart. Of his biometric work much 

 might be said, but this must suffice. He was the 

 one English biologist who actually realised what the 

 whole attempt to give quantitative exactness to bio- 

 logical concepts really means ; and he was the first to 

 calculate organic coefficients of correlation and to 

 suggest their important bearing on evolution. 



Weldon held the chair at Oxford until his death 

 on Good Friday last, after an illness of little more 

 than twenty-four hours. He was born in i860, and 

 was therefore a comparatively young man when he 

 died. He had about reached the stage of life when 

 the germinating processes of the brain have attained 

 their maximum and the mind begins to take stock 

 of its ideas and to seek for means of coordinating 

 them and of so bringing them before the world. He 

 had several works on hand, all of which are unfinished. 

 The most important, perhaps, is that in which he hoped 

 to set down the conclusions he had reached on the 

 great subject of the origin and the handing on by 

 heredity of the properties of organisms. 



His work, therefore, is not finished, but of whom 

 can it be said that his work is finished? He has at 

 least carved out the steps by which others will mount. 

 He has sown the seed. It is for us who remain and 

 for those who come after us to reap the fruits of his 

 labours. 



He was essentially a good man, and happiness was 

 his portion in this life. Blessed in his domestic 

 circumstances, and in holding one of the most dis- 

 tinguished positions the zoological world has to offer; 

 in the possession of good health, of considerable bodily 

 strength and activity, of indomitable energy, of a 

 quick and penetrating intellect which rendered all 

 intellectual effort pleasurable, of acute literary and 

 artistic instincts, of a simple, honest, and lovable 

 nature which endeared him to all who came in contact 

 with him, he had everything which is necessarv for 

 earthly happiness. So amply had nature lavished her 

 gifts upon him that he might well have been counted 

 among her spoilt children. But he was loftv in his 

 aims and strenuous in his life. His early death is a 

 grievous blow to science; to his friends it is an 

 affliction hard to be borne; to those who loved him it 

 can only appear as a cruel and unnecessary calamity; 



no. 1904, VOL. y^ 



but yet, can we say that he was not happy in his 

 death, as in his life? 



Under the wide and starry sky 



Dig the grave and let me lie, 

 Glad did I live and gladly die 



And I laid me down with a will. 



PROF. PIERRE CURIE. 



M PIERRE CURIE, co-discoverer with his wife. 

 Mine. Sklodowska Curie, of the element 

 radium, and the investigator of many of its properties, 

 met his death as the result of a street accident in Paris 

 o:i Thursday, April 19. He was crossing the Place 

 Dauphine when he was knocked down by a cab and fell 

 under a heavy van coming from the opposite direc- 

 tion. The wheels passed over his head, and when 

 taken to the police station life was found to be extinct. 



Cut off in the midst of a career of active scientific 

 investigation, in the flower of life and at the height of 

 a unique reputation, brilliantly won and universally 

 acknowledged, his death will be mourned by the whole 

 civilised world. In this country, where the importance 

 oi his work and discoveries was early and fully 

 recognised, and where the fame attaching to his name 

 has spread widely, deep sympathy will be felt for Mme. 

 Curie in her tragic bereavement, coupled with a sense 

 of loss that a partnership in science so illustrious and 

 fruitful has been brought to so untimely a close. 



Born in Paris on March 15, 1859, Pierre Curie 

 received his early education at the Sorbonne, where 

 he attained the degree of Doctor of Science. He was 

 made professor of physics in the Municipal School of 

 Physics and Chemistry in Paris in 1895, and in 1900 

 he became professor at the Sorbonne. His earlier 

 researches, extending over the period 1885-1894, in- 

 cluded investigations into the phenomenon of piezo- 

 eleclricitv, in conjunction with his brother, J. Curie, 

 the construction and use of electrometers and guard- 

 ring condensers, the magnetic properties of iron, 

 oxygen, and other substances at different temperatures, 

 and the construction of sensitive aperiodic balances. 



In 1895 M- Curie married Marie Sklodowska, one 

 of the senior students at the Municipal School, where 

 he was professor, and joined his wife in the new field 

 of research opened up by M. Henri Becquerel's dis- 

 covery of the radio-activity of uranium and its com- 

 pounds. From 1898 onwards appeared the remark- 

 able joint publications dealing with the discovery of 

 radium and the investigation of its properties. The 

 great advances made by the two investigators in this 

 field may be traced to the collaboration of a trained 

 physicist and a skilled chemist in a subject which 

 may truly be described as a meeting ground of the 

 two sciences. M. Curie's earlier results on piezo- 

 electricity, and the construction and use of electro- 

 meters and condensers were ingeniously applied to 

 the requirements of the new work, and in his hands 

 resulted in a ready and trustworthy method for the 

 electrical measurement of radio-activity being worked 

 out. In tin- detection and initial stages of the separa- 

 tion of radium and polonium in pitchblende, the 

 method accomplished what in the hands of Bunsen 

 the spectroscope had accomplished in the detection 

 and separation of caesium and rubidium in the waters 

 of Durkheim. When sufficient radium had been 

 obtained, M. Curie and his pupils investigated the 

 I ih \ -1, . 1 1 properties, while Mme. Curie devoted herself 

 to the more purely chemical problems, the determina- 

 tion of the atomic weight of the nrw element, and 

 (he attempt to separate polonium. 



M. Curie's rriosi important contributions to the study 



