December 12, 1912] 



NATURE 



415 



Arthur Cayley, James Clerk Maxwell, Lord 

 Kelvin, J. J. Sylvester, J. C. Adams, P. G. Tait, 

 J. Hopkinson, and other men of science have in 

 this way been garnered, and have taken their 

 permanent place among- the national possessions. 

 It came as a great gratification to George Darwin 

 when, in 1907, the syndics of the University Press 

 signified to him their desire to become responsible 

 for a collected edition of his scientific memoirs, 

 to be prepared under his own supervision. In 

 May, 191 1, the last of the four substantial royal 

 octavo volumes in which his work is thus arranged 

 for future generations was pubHshed. 



In the affairs of the University of which he was 

 an ornament, Sir George Darwin made a sub- 

 stantial mark, though it cannot be said that he 

 possessed the patience in discussion that is some- 

 times a necessary condition to taking share in 

 its administration. But his wide acquaintance and 

 friendships among the statesmen and men of affairs 

 of the time, dating often from undergraduate days, 

 gave him openings for usefulness on a wider plane. 

 Thus at a time when residents were bewailing 

 even more than usual the inadequacy of the re- 

 sources of the University for the great expansion 

 which the scientific progess of the age demanded, 

 it was largely on his initiative that, by a departure 

 from all precedent, an unofficial body was con- 

 stituted in 1899 under the name of the Cambridge 

 University Association, to promote the further 

 endowment of the University by interesting its 

 graduates throughout the Empire in its progress 

 and its more pressing needs. This important 

 body, which was organised under the strong lead 

 of the late Duke of Devonshire, then Chancellor, 

 comprises as active members most of the public 

 men .who owe allegiance to Cambridge, and has 

 already by its interest and help powerfully 

 stimulated the expansion of the University into 

 new fields of national work ; though it has not yet 

 achieved financial support on anything like the 

 scale to which American seats of learning are 

 accustomed. Another important body in the 

 foundation and development of which Sir George 

 Darwin took an active part is the Cambridge 

 Appointments Board, which, by bringing trained 

 graduates into connection with the leaders of the 

 commerce and industry of the nation, has worked 

 with notable success for their mutual advantage. 



Sir George Darwin's last public appearance was 

 as president of the fifth International Congress of 

 Mathematicians, which met at Cambridge on 

 August 22-28 of this year. The time for England 

 to receive the congress having obviously arrived, 

 a movement was initiated at Cambridge, with the 

 concurrence of Oxford mathematicians, to send 

 an invitation to the fourth congress held at Rome 

 in 1908. The proposal was cordially accepted, 

 and Sir George Darw-in, as doyen of the mathe- 

 matical school at Cambridge, became chairman of 

 the organising committee, and was subsequently 

 elected by the congress to be their president. 

 Though obviously unwell during part of the meet- 

 ing, he managed to discharge the delicate duties 

 ofthe chair with conspicuous success, and guided 

 with great verve the deliberations of the final 



NO. 2250. VOL. 90] 



assembly of what turned out to be a most suc- 

 cessful meeting of that important body. But this 

 improvement was only temporary ; on their return 

 to Cambridge a month later his friends were most 

 deeply grieved to find that, after some weeks of 

 illness, an exploring operation had strengthened 

 the fears of malignant disease which had not been 

 absent from his own mind for some time. 



In the previous year there had come to him 

 what he naturally regarded as the crowning 

 honour of a life devoted to scientific pursuits, the 

 award by the Royal Society in October, 191 1, of 

 their highest distinction, the Copley medal for the 

 year. He had himself strongly advocated the claims 

 of his kinsman. Sir Francis Galton, who was the 

 medallist of the preceding year, unconscious that 

 his own name had been standing on the list for 

 consideration. Galton died within a year of the 

 award, and his life, written by Darwin for the 

 Dictionary of National Biography, appeared 

 last October. The Royal Society has thus the 

 melancholy satisfaction of having been just in 

 time in two successive years in conferring her 

 highest mark of distinction on the achievements 

 of two of her distinguished sons. J. L. 



UR. S. A. SAUNDER. 



IT is with deep regret that we have to record 

 the death, on Sunday night, December 8, of 

 Mr. S. A. Saunder, at sixty years of age. In 

 Mr. Saunder astronomical science has lost a de- 

 voted and conscientious worker who gave himself 

 whole-heartedly to a line of study requiring much 

 ability, and involving immense labour, but offering 

 no prospect of startling results. 



Mr. Saunder was an assistant master at Wel- 

 lington College. He became a Fellow of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society in 1S94, and from 1907 to 

 February last he was one of the most active and 

 hard-working of honorary secretaries. A few 

 years ago he was appointed Gresham Professor 

 of Astronomy in the City of London. He gave his 

 last course of lectures (on the tides and tidal fric- 

 tion) early in November, but the fatal illness was 

 then upon him, and it was with great difficulty and 

 pain that he brought the lectures to a conclusion. 



Mr. Saunder's scientific work lay especially in 

 the domain of selenography, in which he achieved 

 well-deserved distinction. His paper in the 

 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 

 for January, 1900, on the determination of seleno- 

 graphic positions and the measurement of lunar 

 photographs, w-as the first of a series of similar 

 papers. In the fourth paper of the series he gave 

 a first attempt to determine the figure of the 

 moon. In the Memoirs of the R..A.S.. vol. 59, he 

 published the results of measures of four negatives 

 taken at Paris by Loewy and Puiseaux, with a 

 catalogue of 1433 measured points on the lunar 

 surface. All the positions were carefully reduced 

 to mean libration, and their places given in rect- 

 angular co-ordinates. A still more extensive work 

 was published in the R..'\.S. Memoirs, vol. 60: 

 Results of measures of two Yerkes negatives by 

 Mr. G. W. Ritchev. The catalogue contains 



