Mav i8, 1905] 



NA TURE 



61 



This report was undertaken by Sir Bernhard Samuel- 

 son in 1867 at the request of the vice-president of the 

 Committee of Council, and for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing particulars he visited the principal manufacturing 

 centres of Great Britain and the Continent. The re- 

 port was published as a Parliamentary paper, and the 

 Times records that it was for years referred to in all 

 debates on technical education. He followed up this 

 report by a Parliamentary inquiry into the education of 

 the workmen of our manufactories in 1868, and was 

 chairman of the committee, the report of which was 

 adopted bv the House of Commons. He was a mem- 

 ber of the Duke of Devonshire's Royal Commission on 

 Scientific Instruction, which issued a valuable report, 

 and also of the Royal Commission on Elementary Edu- 

 cation, presided over by Viscount Cross. 



Sir Bernhard Samuelson was appointed chair- 

 man of the Royal Commission on Technical In- 

 struction, the labours of which extended over the 

 years 1882, 1883, and 1884, and embraced an 

 examination into the systems in use in all 

 parts of the United Kingdom and a great por- 

 tion of the Continent of Europe. The exhaustive re- 

 port of the Commission has become the standard 

 authority upon the questions with which it deals. In 

 1888 he was appointed a member of the Parliamentary 

 Committee for inquiring into the working of the Edu- 

 cation Acts. 



For his scientific work, Sir Bernhard Samuelson was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1881, and for 

 his many public services he was created a baronet in 

 1884, and was afterwards made a Privy Councillor. 

 He was a member of the Institutions of Civil and 

 Mechanical Engineers, and was the recipient, in 1871, 

 of the Telford gold medal for a paper on improvements 

 in iron manufactures. He was a member of the 

 council of the Iron and Steel Institute, of which he 

 occupied the presidential chair for two years. At 

 the annual meeting of the institute held last week, 

 the following resolution was unanimously adopted : — 

 " The council have received with the deepest regret 

 the intimation of the death of their esteemed col- 

 league the Right Hon. Sir Bernhard Samuelson, 

 Bart., past-president, P.C., and one of the founders 

 of the institute, and they desire to convey to Lady 

 .Samuelson and his family an expression of sincere 

 sympathy in their bereavement. The council feel 

 that it would be difficult to over-rate the services 

 that Sir Bernhard rendered to the Iron and Steel 

 Institute in the promotion of the objects for which 

 it was formed, and they will ever remember with 

 gratitude his constant readiness to devote his 

 time and energies to the advancement of those 

 objects." 



DR. OTTO VON STRUVE. 



THE announcement of the death of Dr. Otto von 

 Struve does more than awaken a profound regret. 

 His name recalls a period of past history, and summons 

 up before us the memory of times when astronomy 

 occupied a different position from that it assumes to- 

 day, when it had fewer objects of interest wherewith 

 to attract, and offered fewer problems for solution. 

 Fifty-five years have gone since Otto von Struve re- 

 ceived at the hands of the late Astronomer Royal the 

 medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his paper 

 on precession and solar motion, and sixty-five since the 

 paper was published. Seeing that Struve was born in 

 1819, he early came into prominence as an astronomer, 

 and the value attached to the results and the confidence 

 inspired by the paper are not a little remarkable, for 

 there were some verv obvious objections which might 

 have been taken to the conclusions stated, or at least 



NO. 1855, VOL. 72] 



it appears so when viewed from a later standpoml. 

 .\ccompanying the paper was also a discussion of the 

 amount and direction of the solar motion. Only four 

 years had elapsed since .\rgelander had published his 

 paper assigning with some precision the place of the 

 solar apex, and thus perhaps settling a doubt which 

 had long divided astronomical thought. Prevost and 

 Klugel had taken one side of the question, and Burck- 

 hardt and Lindenau led the party who were unwilling 

 to accept the evidence. Men's minds were certainly 

 divided as to the possibility of detecting the sun's 

 motion, and Struve 's paper came at a fortunate moment 

 and strengthened the evidence produced by Argelander, 

 for, based on very different material, Struve's position 

 scarcely differed two degrees from that assigned by the 

 .^bo astronomer. Also, Struve was fairly fortunate m 

 fixing the annual amount of the -:olar motion at about 

 twice that of the radius of the earth's orbit. Later 

 investigations have shown that a greater velocity is 

 probable, but he was certainly correct in asserting that 

 the linear motion of the sun appeared to be less than 

 that of stars in general. 



But it was in the domain of double stars that Otto 

 von Struve won his reputation, and it was in this 

 direction that he exhibited untiring industry. His 

 father at Dorpat, and later at Pulkova, had not only 

 devoted himself with great energy to this branch of 

 astronomy, but had introduced a degree of accuracy 

 into the observations that up to his time had been 

 wanting. Otto von Struve, anxious to uphold tlie 

 family reputation, was as diligent to detect these objects 

 and as accurate in his observations as was his father 

 before him, though he laboured under some peculiar 

 difficulty as an observer, and was obliged to remove a 

 systematic error which affected his observations by in- 

 troducing a correction depending upon the distance of 

 the component stars — a correction investigated with 

 great care by means of artificial double stars. 



From 1861', on the failing health of his father, Otto 

 von Struve became the director ol the Imperial Obser- 

 vatory at Pulkova, and in every department maintained 

 the reputation for accuracy the observatory had won. In 

 meridian places of stars, in cometary observations, in 

 geodesy, in spectroscopy, the activity and efficiency of 

 the institution have been everywhere acknowledged. 

 In expeditions, whether for the transit of Venus or for 

 eclipse work, the observatory has displayed its zeal and 

 its desire to cooperate with similar work carried on 

 elsewhere. Instruments have been renewed as needed, 

 and the erection of the 30-inch refractor testifies to the 

 determination to keep the observatory on a level with 

 those best equipped. Under the care of the late 

 director, splendid laboratories have arisen devoted to 

 spectroscopic inquiries, and it is not too much to say 

 that his direction of a world-famous observatory has 

 been of a most enlightened and beneficent character. 

 The recipient of many honour^, he retired from the 

 observatory in 1893 to enjoy the repose to which he 

 was so well entitled amid the society of his many 

 friends. 



NOTES. 



The Croonian lecture of thr- Royal Society will be 

 delivered by Mr. \V. B. Hardy, F.R.S., on Thursday next. 

 May 25, on "The Globulins." 



By the creation of the Committee of Defence, the func- 

 tions and views of which were described by Mr. Balfour 

 in the House of Commons on Thuisday last, an expert 

 advisorv bodv has been introduced into the councils of the 

 Government. In the discussion which followed the speech 

 of the Prime Minister, Mr. Hakl.'mp K'marked that millions 

 of munev uselessly expended would h;ivo been saved to the 



