TRANSACTIONS OF ‘THE SECTIONS.» 
“Section A.-MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
“PRESIDENT OF THE SEcTION—Prorsssor J. J. THoMson, M.A., D.Sc, FOR.S. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. 
The Prestent delivered the following Address :— 
‘THERE is a melancholy reminiscence connected with this meeting pf our Section, 
for when the British Association last met in Liverpool the chair in Section A 
was occupied by Clerk-Maxwell. In the quarter of a century which has elapsed 
since that meeting, one of the most important advances made. in our science has 
-been the researches which, inspired by Maxwell’s view of electrical action, con- 
firmed that view, and revolutionised our conception of the processes occurring in 
the electro-magnetic field. _When the Association last met in Liverpool Maxwell’s 
‘view was almost without supporters; to-day its opponents are fewer than its sup- 
porters then. Maxwell’s theory, which is the development and extension of 
Paraday’s, has not only affected our way of regarding the older phenomena of 
electricity, it has, in the hands of Hertz and others, led to the discovery of whole 
_ regions of phenomena previously undreamt of. It is sad to think that his prema- 
_ ture death prevented him from reaping the harvest he had sown. His writings 
are, however, with us, and are a storehouse to which we continually turn, and 
never, I think, without finding something valuable and suggestive. 
‘Thus ye teach us day by day, 
Wisdom, though now far away.’ 
The past year has been rich in matters of interest to physicists. In it has 
oceurred the jubilee of Lord Kelvin’s tenure of the Professorship of Natural Philo- 
‘sophy at the University of Glasgow. Some of us were privileged to see this year 
at Glasgow an event unprecedented in the history of. physical science in England, 
when congratulations to Lord Kelvin on the jubilee of his professorship were 
offered by people of every condition and country. Every scientific society and 
every scientific man is Lord Kelvin’s debtor; but no society and no body of 
Men owe him a greater debt than Section .\ of the British Association ; .he has 
ne more for this Section than any one else, he has.rarely missed its meetings, he 
has contributed to the Section papers which will make its proceedings imperishable, 
and by his enthusiasm he has year by year inspired the workers in this Section to 
mew with increased vigour their struggles to penetrate the secrets of Nature. 
song may we continue to receive from him the encouragement and assistance 
which have been so freely given for the past half-century. 
By tke death of Sir W. R. Grove, the inventor of Grove’s cell, we have lost a 
physicist whose name is a familiar one in every laboratory in the world. Besides 
the Grove cell, we owe to him the discovery of the gas battery, and a series of re- 
searches on the electrical behaviour of gases, whose importance is only now beginning 
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