264 

an aerial, Dr. Fison fell through a skylight to the floor 
below. Three days later he died without regaining 
consciousness. 
Dr. Fison’s life-story is that of a teacher whose 
enjoyment in knowing was so vivid that no delight 
could equal that of passing his knowledge on. In his 
earlier life he had for twenty years lectured for the 
Oxford University Extension Delegacy ; and this is a 
school in which the spirit of enthusiasm for knowledge 
is engendered. If an extension lecturer be not in com- 
plete sympathy with his audience, if he has not the 
instinct for detecting want of harmony between his 
mind and theirs, his lectures are a failure ; his thought- 
waves must be of the length for. which his auditors’ 
receivers are tuned. 
From 1912 until his death Dr. Fison was Secretary to 
the Gilchrist Trust. Each year in the spring he visited 
various parts of Britain to inspire enthusiasm and to 
organise local arrangements; in the autumn and 
winter to deliver lectures. His efforts to fill success- 
fully the gaps caused by death in the Gilchrist staff 
discovered to him how very rare are the men who have 
the gift which he possessed of securing in their first 
few sentences the complete confidence of their audiences 
and retaining their strained attention for eighty or 
ninety minutes—halls crammed with people of all sorts 
and conditions, from the clergy, doctors, and school- 
masters of the town to miners and mill-hands—sending 
them away with the feeling that the evening which had 
closed a long day’s work had altered their views of the 
world and had, at the same time, entertained them 
hugely. 
In 1906 Dr. Fison was appointed lecturer in physics 
to Guy’s Hospital, and somewhat later to the London 
Hospital also. Although his teaching work was ele- 
mentary, he held that no teacher can be efficient who 
does not follow the most recent developments of his 
subject. He was a sound scholar—in the sense in 
which the expression is used by students of the humani- 
ties who are disposed to arrogate it to themselves. The 
very large gathering of students at the memorial 
service in the Chapel of Guy’s was a measure of his 
success. Shortly before the accident brought his 
activities to a sudden close he talked to the writer of 
these notes of his plans for an early retirement and the 
devotion of his remaining days to investigations for 
which his duties as a teacher had left him but scanty 
leisure, and the publication of his reflections—his bent 
was ever towards philosophy—upon various aspects 
presented by the problems of physical science. His 
best-known contributions are “ Recent Advances in 
Astronomy ” (1898) and ‘A Textbook of Practical 
Physics ” (1911, rewritten 1922). : 

Mr. Rawpon LEVETT. 
Tuer death at Colwyn Bay on February 1 of Mr. 
Rawdon Levett, at seventy-eight years of age, will 
be regretted by none more than by the members of the 
Mathematical Association, of which, under its old name 
of the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical 
Teaching, he was one of the original founders. From his 
pen, in Nature, of December 29, 1870, p. 169, first came 
the suggestion that such an Association should be formed, 
and the first conference was held at University College, 
NO. 2782, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 


[FEBRUARY 24, 1923 
London, on January 17, 1871. Levett possessed much 
more than the driving power and organising capacity _ 
which made him so successful a secretary in the first 
twelve years of the Association. Unlike most of his 
contemporaries he had familiarised himself with the 
continental text-books and with the methodology of 
his subject as taught in France, Germany, and Italy. — 
The ideas of non-Euclidean geometry found in him an 
apt exponent to any who cared in those days to listen 
to him, and in the revolution that was to come in the 
fields of geometry and analysis he played for a time a 
prominent part. His “ Elements of Trigonometry,” 
which he brought out in collaboration with Dr. Davison 
in 1892, shows how much he had been influenced by 
De Morgan, by Cauchy and the continental school, 
and by Chrystal—and in that case the influence had 
been reciprocal. 
The name of Canon J. M. Wilson has stood for half 
a century with that of Rawdon Levett on the list of 
officers or of vice-presidents of their Association. Both 
were at St. John’s ; Wilson was Senior in 1859 ; Levett 
was 11th Wrangler in 1865 (Rayleigh’s year). Both 
were schoolmasters, Wilson in those days at Rugby, 
and Levett at King Edward’s School, Birmingham. 
Both have retained their interest in the work of the 
Association, though ill-health had for many years past 
prevented Levett from taking any active part in its 
later history. The interests of neither were restricted 
to the sphere in which their academic honours were won. 
Levett was a man of wide reading and general culture. 
By many his name was probably seen for the first time 
on the dedicatory page of “ John Inglesant ”—* I 
dedicate this volume to you that I may have an oppor- 
tunity of calling myself your friend.” The spiritual 
kinship that knit together men like Levett and Short- 
house indicates but one of the intellectual influences 
that brought to the Birmingham schoolmaster intimate 
relations with a wide circle of men who appreciated to 
the full his noble character, rare judgment, and fine 
literary instinct. Birmingham was the poorer by his 
loss when the shadow of the White Scourge fell upon 
him in 1903, and he retired to his Welsh home at Colwyn 
Bay. Now he is gone, and the only founders left are 
Canon Wilson, Mr. A. A. Bourne, Sir Thomas Muir, the 
Rev. E. F. M. MacCarthy (secretary for seven years), 
and the Rev. W. H. Laverty. W. jaG 

Pror. Gaston BONNIER. 
WE regret to announce the recent death at Paris of 
Prof. Gaston Bonnier, professor of botany at the 
Sorbonne, member of the Institute (Académie des 
Sciences), of the Academy of Agriculture and the 
Council of the University of Paris, Officier de la Légion 
d’Honneur, foreign member of the Linnzean Society 
of London, and member of many other scientific 
bodies. 
Prof. Bonnier was the president of the Société 
Botanique de France, and editor of the Revue générale 
de Botanique, founded by him in 1889. Among his 
numerous botanical publications that have become 
classic may be particularly mentioned his “Cours de 
botanique,” ‘ Géographie botanique et la botanique 
descriptive,” ‘‘ Flore compléte de la France,” “ Nou- 
velle Flore des environs de Paris,” and “ Flore du nord 


