January 2, 1902] 



NA TURE 



PRIZE AWARDS OF THE PARIS ACADEMY 

 OF SCIENCES. 



A T the annual meeting of the Academy of Sciences, held on 

 ■^^ December l6, 1901, the presidential address was given by 

 M. Fouque and the following prize awards were announced : — 



Geometry. — M. Leonce Laiigel is awarded the Francceur 

 prize and M. Emile Borel the Poncelet prize. 



Mechanics. — The extraordinary prize of six thousand francs 

 is divided between M. Tissot for his work relating to the 

 utilisation of wireless telegraphy in the Navy, and M. Marbec 

 for his calculations on the strength of tubular boilers ; M. 

 Aime Witz receives the Montyon prize, and M. Boulvin the 

 Plumey prize for his applications of the entropy diagram to the 

 steam engine. The Fourneyron prize, the subject proposed for 

 which was the theoretical or experimental study of steam 

 turbines, is not awarded. 



Astrowmy. — The Lalande prize to M. Thome, and the Valz 

 prize to M. Charles Andre for his treatise on stellar astronomy. 



Physics. — The La Caze prize is awarded to M. Curie for his 

 work on radium and on piezo-electricity of crystals, the (iaston 

 Plante prize to M. G. Boucherot, the Kastner-Boursalt prize to 

 MM. H. Gall and de Monllaur for their electrochemical work. 



Statistics. — The Montyon prize for statistics is given to M. G. 

 Baudran for his work on tuberculosis in the Department of the 

 Oise, a very honouiable mention being accorded to the memoir 

 of MM. Delobel, Lebrun and Cozette on the statistics of con- 

 tagious diseases of animals in France, and to M. Lowenthal. 



Cheniistyy. — The Jecker prize is divided between MM. 

 Moureu, Simon and Leo Vignon, MM. Wyroubofif and 

 Verneuil receiving the La Caze prize for their researches on 

 the rare metals. 



Mineralogy and Geology. — The Delesse prize is awarded to 

 M. Gaston Vasseur for his work on the classification of the 

 Tertiary strata in the west and south-west of France. 



Physical Geography. — The Gay prize is divided between 

 MJL Franchet and Saint-Vyes. 



Botany. — .MM. Matruchot and Molliard receive the Bordin 

 prize for their work on the influence of the external conditions 

 on the protoplasm and nucleus in plants, M. Karl E. Hirn 

 the Desmazieres prize, iL Maze the Montagne prize for his 

 researches on the mechanism of the fixation of nitrogen by the 

 Leguminosa:, M. Ferdinand Debray the de la Fons-Melicocq 

 prize, and M. X. Patouillard the Thore prize for his taxonomic 

 essay on the families and genera of the Hymenomycetes. 



Anatomy and Zoology. — The grand prize of the Physical 

 Sciences is awarded to M. Maupas for his two memoirs on the 

 biology and the origin of the sexual elements in Nematods, 

 and the Savigny prize to MM. Jules Bonnier and Ch. Perez 

 for their exploration of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. 



Medicine and Surgery. — The Montyon prize is divided between 

 MAL Buffard and Schneider, Lignieres, and Claude and Bait- 

 hazard, the Barbier prize between MiNL Moreigne, Tissier, and 

 Goyon, the Breant prize in equal parts between MM. Jules 

 Courmont and V. Montagard, Weil, and Levaditi ; M. Uenc le 

 Fur receives the Godard prize, M. Gley the Mege prize, whilst 

 the Bellion prize is divided between MJL Landouzy and G. 

 Brouardel, and M. Sauton, very honourable mentions being 

 accorded to M. Razou and M. Pegurier. The Lallemand prize 

 is divided between MM. Catois, J. C. Roux and J. Lcpine, 

 MM. F. Bernheim and A. Comte receiving very honourable 

 mention. M. Catrin receives the Baron Larrey prize for his 

 work on mental alienation in the Army, an honourable mention 

 being accorded to MM. Tostivint and Remlinger for their 

 memoir on the comparative pathology of the European and 

 Arabian races. 



Physiology. — The Montyon prize for experimental physiology 

 is awarded to M. Marcel Mirande, M. Bonniot being accorded 

 an honourable mention, the Pourat prize to JL Tissot for his 

 researches on the cooling due to muscular contraction, the La 

 Caze prize to M. Charpentier, the Philipeaux prize being 

 divided between MM. L. Camus and M. .Moussu. 



General Prizes. — The Lavoisier medal is awarded to M. Emil 

 Fischer, professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin, 

 correspondant of the Academy, for the whole of his works and in 

 particular for those relating to the syntheses of the sugars. The 

 Montyon prize (unhealthy trades) is divided between MM. 

 Albert Dormoy and L. Vaillard, M. Halphen receiving an 

 encouragement. XL Baubigny receives the Wilde prize for 

 his work on atomic weights, MM. Fosse and Grignard the 



NO. 1679, VOL, 65] 



Cahours prize (in equal parts), P. Stanislas Chevalier the 

 Tchihatchef prize for meteorological and astronomical studies 

 in China, M. Gabriel Lippmann the Jean Reynaud prize, 

 M. F. Foureau the Leconte prize for his scientific explorations 

 in southern Algeria, M. Foureau the Janssen gold medal, and 

 MM. N. Villatte, E. Verlet-Hanus and A. P. de Chambrun 

 silver gilt medals for their work in the Sahara, XL Gabriel 

 Kcenigs the Petit D'Ormoy prize for his researches in geometry 

 and mechanics, M. Bouvier the Petit D'Ormoy prize (natural 

 sciences), XL Guichard the Saintour prize, M. A. Ponsot the 

 Gegner prize, M. Fremont the Tremont prize. 



The Baron de Joest prize is divided between MM. Verschaffel 

 and Saint-Blancat for their astronomical work, the prize founded 

 by Mme. la Marquise de Laplace being given to M. Japiot, and 

 that founded by M. Felix Rivot to MM. Pellarin, Ott, Japiot 

 and Guillaume. 



ELECTRIC WAVES. 



T^HE annual meeting of the German Association of Men of 

 * Science and Physicians was held last autumn in Hamburg. 

 It is twenty-five years since the Association last met in the birth- 

 place of Heinrich Hertz, who was then a young man of 

 nineteen, not yet entered upon the active period of his life, 

 which ended by his death in 1S94, and which, though so short, 

 was yet so great and full of usefulness. It fell, therefore, to 

 the lot of Prof. Ernst Lecher to deliver this address' in memory 

 of Hertz and to review the further development, which has 

 taken place since his death, of his greatest work, the experi- 

 mental proof of the existence of electric waves. 



It is, indeed, a long chain of events, as Hertz himself ex- 

 pressed it, to which the discovery of electric waves belongs, 

 one event linking itself into another, the whole forming perhaps 

 the most noble and convincing proof that our modern methods 

 of scientific thought and research are true and exact. Prof. 

 Lecher gives an interesting sketch of this in the pamphlet before 

 us. The first link in the chain was forged by Faraday. Until 

 his time the scientific world was dominated by the old New- 

 tonian ideas of force acting at a distance, an idea which seems 

 to us now, on close examination, to be manifestly absurd. It 

 required, however, the genius of Faraday to break loose from 

 this line of thought and to perceive that a medium is necessary 

 in order that one body may exert a force upon another ; and to 

 the eye of Faraday the whole of space became filled with lines 

 and tubes of force, real changes of condition in the intervening 

 media, which, although invisible, were as clear to him as the 

 objects acted upon themselves. The way was thus paved for 

 Maxwell, who collected these ideas in his really magic formula; 

 of the electrodynamical theory of light. According to Maxwell 

 there are electric currents in insulators, these being of the nature 

 of displacement currents. Although these currents are of very 

 short duration, yet they must have like magnetic and inductive 

 effects to the ordinary currents in a conductor. If, now, a dis- 

 placement current vibrates backwards and forwards, then in a 

 neighbouring insulator displacement currents will be induced, 

 and so forth ; a transversal wave-motion is thus propagated until 

 it is absorbed by induction in a conductor and transformed into 

 heat. On calculating the velocity of this wave propagation it 

 was found that two quantities appeared in the result — the 

 dielectric coefficient and the permeability. The square of the 

 velocity is equal to the reciprocal value of the product of these 

 two values. It was found, however, that whole powers of this 

 value were always appearing in different branches of the theory 

 of electricity, and, most extraordinarily to say, the value was 

 always found to be equal to the velocity of light. Maxwell, 

 therefore, came to the theoretical conclusion in 1S65 that an 

 electromagnetic wave must travel in an insulator, e.g. in air or 

 vacuum, with the velocity of light. But not only the velocity, 

 concluded Maxwell, should be the same, but also the geometrical 

 and other properties must be equal ; a ray of light was therefore 

 a series of electric waves, light was electricity. These ideas, 

 immediately after their enunciation by Maxwell, did not meet 

 with any great acceptance, and an experimental proof of their 

 accuracy was looked upon as being altogether out of the 

 question. This feeling was even shared by Hertz himself, for in 

 his description of his classical experiment where, by means of a 



1 Ueber die Entdeckung der elektrisc'nen Wellen durch H. Hertz und die 

 weitere Entwicklung dieses Gebietes. (Leipzig ; Johann Ambrosius Barth. 



