134 



NA TURE 



[Decemuer 2, 1909 



tions which have devolved upon the Royal Society. That 

 list, however, conveys no adequate idea of the varied and 

 even exacting character of some of its items ; but, over 

 and above the functions therein enumerated, others of a 

 less public kind make large demands upon the time and 

 thought of many of our fellows. 



For many years past the Royal Society has acted as 

 a kind of board of advice to the Government of the 

 country in matters wherein scientific knowledge is re- 

 quired^ In this informal capacity the society has been 

 requested to undertake the conduct of many inquiries in 

 the public interest. It has been likewise entrusted with 

 the administration of funds voted by Parliament for the 

 promotion of investigation. 



Requests are not infrequently made to the society by 

 different Government departments for advice or coopera- 

 tion in matters wherein expert scientific knowledge is re- 

 quired. For years past we have had a tropical diseases 

 committee, which, in association with the Colonial Office, 

 has been carrying on investigations into the nature and 

 prophylaxis of some of the maladies incident to the human 

 and animal populations of our colonies and protectorates 

 in warm climates. A commission dispatched by this com- 

 mittee to Uganda has for some time been at work, under 

 Sir David Bruce, studying the decimating scourge of 

 sleeping sickness, while another commission, under the 

 same committee, is busy in London searching experiment- 

 ally for some drug that may be effective in the treatment 

 of that terrible disease. A few years ago, at the joint 

 instance of the War Office, .'\dmiralty, and Colonial Office, 

 we dispatched a commission to Malta to investigate the 

 peculiar fever which had for so long a time reduced the 

 effective strength of our garrisons and fleets in the 

 Mediterranean. The observers were fortunate in soon dis- 

 covering the source of the disease, and were able to point 

 out the steps to be taken to cope with it. The result has 

 been that this serious malady has now been almost entirely 

 banished from the hospitals of Malta. At present another 

 committee of the society is engaged, at the request of the 

 Home Office, in studying the disease known as glass- 

 workers' cataract. The India Office likewise applies to us 

 for advice, and we have an " Indian Government Advisory 

 Committee " and an " Observatories Committee," the duty 

 of which is to consider the reports of various public depart- 

 ments in the great dependency, and to offer suggestions 

 towards the improvement of their scientific operations. 



.■Mthough the Royal Society administers annually a con- 

 siderable sum of money, by far the largest part of the 

 disbursements is ear-marked for various special applica- 

 tions, and cannot be employed for other objects. So far, 

 indeed, as its general purposes are concerned, the society 

 cannot be regarded as adequately provided. For nearly 

 two hundred and fifty years it has continued to hold aloft 

 the torch of science, but the constantly augmenting 

 demands of modern progress make its task increasingly 

 difficult of satisfactory performance. I have referred to 

 the growing cost of our publications, and there are other 

 parts of our organisation wherein the development of our 

 work is hampered by the lack of funds. Men of science 

 are seldom rich ; it is therefore all the more gratifying 

 to be able to record examples of the continuous generous 

 liberality of our fellows ; but it is hardly from our own 

 ranks that we can look for any substantial addition to 

 our resources. Perchance in the general community there 

 mav yet be found some men who mav be led to see that, 

 besides the various laudable objects that have hitherto 

 claimed their care, the advancement of science is likewise 

 an important public and educational interest, and that 

 benefactions are not unworthilv bestowed in enabling the 

 Roval .Society adequately to maintain the great work which 

 it has inherited from the past. 



Medallists, 1909. 

 Copley Medal. 

 The Copley medal is this year awarded to Dr. George 

 William Hill, For.Mem.R.S. Now that Simon New- 

 comb is no longer with us. Dr. Hill occupies, beyond 

 challenge, the first position in the great subject of 

 dynamical astronomy. 



His processes are not onlv marked by extraordinary 

 originality, the result of high mathematical genius, but 

 NO. 2092, VOL. 82] 



also in every case his methods and researches are directed 

 towards practical astronomical ends. His supreme work 

 is probably contained in his researches on the theory of 

 the moon's motion, which has remained the great problem 

 of gravitational astronomy ever since the time of Newton. 

 Here his introduction and development of the principle of 

 disturbed periodic orbits has given an entirely new direc- 

 tion to the science, culminating recently in the lunar 

 tables of E. W. Brown, which mark an epoch in the 

 practical side of the lunar theory. 



This work of Hill has been fruitful in new advances in 

 many directions. His ideas have given rise, as developed 

 by Poincar^ and other investigators, to new departments 

 of abstract mathematical analysis, while in the hands of 

 Lord Rayleigh they have shed light on important and 

 difficult problems of general mathematical physics. 



His collected works have recently been published by the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington in four quarto 

 volumes ; the importance of their contents can hardly be 

 overestimated. M. Henri Poincar^, in his introduction to 

 these volumes, described Hill as " une des physionomies 

 les plus originales du monde scientifique am^ricain." 



.Astronomy owes to him new theories of the motions of 

 the systems of Jupiter and Saturn, to which the whole of 

 vol. iii. of his works is consecrated. 



His shorter papers deal with nearly every problem in the 

 lunar and planetary theories, with mathematical geodesy, 

 and other subjects. .All his work is characterised by its 

 original points of view combined with practical aims, by 

 maturity of thought, and high suggestiveness. It forms 

 an index of the simplicity and aloofness of its author, who 

 has been one of the main ornaments of astronomical science 

 for more than a generation. 



Royal Medals. 



One of the Royal medals has been awarded, with the 

 approval of His Majesty the King, to Prof. Augustus 

 Edward Hough Love, F.R.S., in recognition of his 

 numerous and important contributions to mathematics, 

 and especially to mathematical physics. He has written 

 many valuable papers on various branches of hydro- 

 dynamics, in particular on the theories of jets, of vortex 

 motion, and of revolving gravitating masses of liquid. He 

 is the author of a work on " Elasticity," now in its 

 second edition, which is highly appreciated at home and 

 abroad, and ranks as the standard treatise on the subject. 

 In this he has incorporated various valuable researches 

 of his own, which have appeared in the Philosophical 

 Transactions and elsewhere. He has further investigated 

 closely the circumstances of wave-propagation in air, in 

 plastic solids, and in the electromagnetic medium, and 

 has examined in particular the phenomena which present 

 themselves at wave-fronts when the motion is discon- 

 tinuous. More recently he has published remarkable 

 papers on terrestrial physics, including a speculation on 

 the origin of the present distribution of land and water, 

 and an investigation of the precise extent of the inferences 

 which can be drawn as to the internal constitution of the 

 earth from the observed data relating to the heights of 

 ocean tides of long periods, the lunar disturbance of level, 

 and the approximate period of the small movements of 

 the Pole over the earth's surface. 



His Majesty has likewise approved of the award of the 

 other Royal medal to Major Ronald Ross, F.R.S. 



The name of Major Ross has become widely 

 known on account of the important investigations which 

 he has carried out on the life-history of the malarial 

 organism and the means of preventing malarial infection. 

 Following up a clue indicated by Manson, he began, in 

 1895, at Secunderabad, in India, in circumstances which 

 entailed much difhcultv and many delays, an investigation 

 as to whether the malaria parasite, discovered by Laveran, 

 passes part of its life-history within the body of a biting 

 insect. After more than two years of fruitless e.xperiments 

 Ross discovered a stage of the human malaria parasite in 

 the tissues of a mosquito (.Anopheles') which had been 

 allowed to feed on the blood of a malarial patient. In 

 1898 he proceeded to work out in detail the life-history nf 

 a malarial parasite found in sparrows and larks in Indi:;. 

 He traced the complicated stages in the development of 

 this parasite from its inception into the stomach of a 

 gnat {Ciilcx fatigaiis) which feeds on the blood of these 



