588 



NATURE 



[December 5, 1912 



building' recently erected, was 30,000/., or 35,000/. 

 including equipment. Towards this total the sum 

 ol 10,000/. was g'iven by Sir Julius Wernher, and 

 15,000/. will be provided by the Treasury. Some 

 additional amounts have also been received. For 

 the further sums necessary the laboratory will be 

 dependent on the assistance of other donors. A 

 committee, with Sir William White as chairrnan, 

 consisting of representatives of the various 

 societies and institutions connected with the 

 laboratory, has been appointed to raise the neces- 

 sary funds, some gooo/. in all, and help has 

 already been received from some of the City com- 

 panies and others. 



In his address, the president. Sir Archibald 

 Geikie, K.C.B., referred first to the losses the 

 society had sustained by death since the previous 

 anniversary meeting. Four foreign members 

 have passed away, and ten Fellows, among whom 

 were two former presidents of the society and 

 Copley medallists. We print from the address 

 the descriptions of the prominent points of the 

 work of the medallists of this year. 



The Copley Med.^l. 

 The Copley medal is this year assigned to Prof. 

 Felix Klein, of Uottingen, for his researches in mathe- 

 matics. Prof. Klein is, perhaps, most widely known 

 in this country for his investigations in geometry, 

 which attached themselves closely to the work of 

 Cayley and other British mathematicians. This work 

 has expanded and systematised our conceptions of 

 non-Euclidean geometry, and indeed the philosophy of 

 geometry in general. Of at least equal importance 

 iiave been his researches in theory ot functions. In 

 his earlier papers he dealt mainly with the transforma- 

 tion of elliptic functions and the related theory of 

 modular functions. The key to the most of what 

 followed lies in the memoir, "Neue Beitrage zur 

 Riemannischen Functionentheorie," published in 1882. 

 In this memoir, quite independently of Poincare, and 

 from an entirely different point of view, Klein lays 

 the foundations of the theory of automorphic functions. 



The Rumford MED.^L. 

 This year the Rumford medal has been awarded to 

 Dr. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, of Leyden, in recog- 

 nition of the great value of his contributions to low- 

 temperature research, among which his liquefaction of 

 helium is the most noted. He has founded at Leyden 

 I he most thoroughly equipped laboratory in the world 

 for investigations in low temperatures. In that insti- 

 tui'on a series of researches has been carried out re- 

 garding the effects of such great cold as can be 

 obtained by the use of liquid hydrogen and even 

 helium on the properties of substances, such as their 

 niagnetic relations and the electrical resistance of pure 

 metals and alloys, the results of which are most strik- 

 ing- and important for future progress. 



The Roy.^l Med.als. 

 The awards of the two Royal medals annually given 

 by our patron the King have received his Majesty's 

 a]3rroval. One of these medals has been assigned to 

 (iiir colleague, Prof. William Mitchinson Hicks, as a 

 m.irk of the society's appreciation of the value of his 

 contributions to physical science. Among his re- 

 searches may be specially mentioned those on hydro- 

 dvnamics, and particularly on vortex motion, published 

 in the Philosophical Transactions. Of late years he 

 has dm'oted much attention to the numerical relations 



NO. 2249, VOL. 90] 



which exist between the frequencies of lines belonging 

 to the same spectral series. 



The other Royal medal has been adjudged to Proi. 

 Grafton Elliot Smith, in recognition of the value of 

 his biological investigations, more especially in regard 

 to the morphology of the brain as developed in amphi- 

 bians, reptiles, birds, monotremata, marsupials, and 

 nearly every group of placental mammals. Prof. 

 Elliot Smith's work among the ancient cemeteries of 

 Nubia may also be mentioned. Already it has brought 

 to light many interesting anatomical features in the 

 buried remains of the former population of the Nile 

 Valley. 



The D.wy Medal. 



The Davy medal has been assigned to Prof. Otto 

 Wallach for his researches in organic chemistry, par- 

 ticularly in regard to the essential oils. Our present 

 knowledge of these complex vegetable products is 

 largely the result of the numerous analytical investiga- 

 tions which he has carried out in the laboratories of 

 Gottingen. He has made many important discoveries, 

 more especially in connection with the cyclo-olefines 

 and their derivatives, and his researches on these com- 

 pounds have played a notable part in the general 

 development of organic chemistry. 



The Darwin Medal. 



The Darwin medal is this year awarded to one of 

 the sons of the illustrious man in whose honour this 

 medal was founded twenty-two years ago. Mr. Fran- 

 cis Darwin by his researches has done much to 

 emphasise the importance of plant movements in rela- 

 tion to environment, and has shown how strong is 

 the evidence for the view that these various movements 

 are the expression of the plant's own individualitv 

 in response to external stimuli, and that they have 

 been developed or acquired by the plant as an adapta- 

 tion to environment in the struggle for life. It is 

 pleasant to. remember that these interesting researches 

 have been a continuation of the work which he carried 

 on, conjointly with his father, in the long series of 

 observations and experiments which are recorded in 

 that important treatise, "The Power of Movement in 

 Plants." 



The Buchanan Medal. 



This medal is awarded every five years in recogni- 

 tion of distinguished services to hygienic science or 

 practice in the direction either of original research or 

 of professional, administrative, or constructive work, 

 without limit of nationality or sex. It has this year 

 been adjudged to Colonel William Crawford Gorgas, 

 for his remarkable services under the Ainerican 

 Government, in combating the terrible scourge of 

 yellow fever. As chief sanitarv officer at Havana, 

 Cuba, he there for the first time applied those sanitary 

 methods by which the vellow fever was almost entirely 

 eradicated from the place. This marked success led 

 to his being entrusted in 190J with a similar but 

 greater task in the Panama Canal zone, where the 

 same disease was ramnant, and where he is still 

 engaged. His success in that region has been not 

 less conspicuous. 



The HfCHES Medai . 

 This medal has been adjudged to William Duddell, 

 F.R.S., in recognition of the value of his researches 

 in technical electricitv, and, in oarticular, his investi- 

 gations with the oscillograph on telephonic sounds, 

 his work on radiotelegraphv with the thermo-galvano- 

 meter, his development of the vibration galvanometer, 

 and his investigations on the production of currents 

 of very high frequencv bv (he electric arc and by • 

 mechanical means. 



