Annual Report of the Council.. 213 



till 1861, when he went to Berlin, and continued his 

 studies under Encke, Dove, and Magnus. At that time 

 the apparatus available for physical experiments was of a 

 comparatively crude order, and there can be little doubt 

 that Kundt's extraordinary power of devising and adapting 

 apparatus for experimental purposes was developed and 

 fostered in Magnus's laboratory. His first papers, that on 

 " double refraction in vibrating rods " amongst others, 

 appeared in 1863-4, and in 1866 he published an extremely 

 important paper, " On a new kind of acoustical dust 

 figures," in which he described and applied the now well- 

 known " Kundt's method " of finding the velocity of sound 

 in a gas,, or in a solid. He married in 1866, became 

 lecturer of Berlin University in 1867, succeeded Clausius as 

 professor of physics at the Polytechnic at Zurich in 1868, 

 and after a stay of two years at Zurich, was called to 

 Wiirzburg, again as successor to Clausius. During these 

 years he appears to have been directing his attention more 

 to optical questions, publishing as a result several papers 

 on anomalous dispersion and allied subjects, and displaying 

 again his great ingenuity by the invention of the " crossed 

 prisms " method of experimenting in this field. After 

 another interval of two years, Kundt was called to Strass- 

 burg to take part in re-establishing there a German 

 University. Under his direction the Physical Institute was 

 built, and it has since served as the model for many 

 institutes intended for the teaching of physics and the pro- 

 secution of research. He remained at Strassburg till 1888, 

 acting as Rector of the University in 1877-8. During this 

 interval, either alone or in conjunction with his students, he 

 published papers dealing with the viscosity, thermal con- 

 ductivity, absorption and dispersion, of gases ; the electrical 

 properties of crystals ; the rotation of the plane of polari- 

 sation of light by magnetic substances ; and the indices 

 of refraction of metals. In 1888 he was called to Berlin 



