214 Annual Report of the Council. 



to succeed Helmholtz, and his successful career there was 

 terminated all too soon by his death, which took place at 

 Israelsdorf near Liibeck, on the 21st May, 1894. During 

 his stay at Strassburg his well-known skill as a teacher 

 and experimenter attracted to that University a great 

 number of students of physics, who have since made 

 names for themselves, and it is not too much to say that 

 there are very few of the more distinguished younger 

 German physicists who do not owe a deep debt of 

 gratitude to Kundt, and who do not look back with 

 pleasure to the time they spent working in his laboratory 

 at Strassburg or at Berlin. He was elected an honorary 

 member of the Society in 1892. C. H. L. 



Jean Charles Gillisard de Marignac, a descend- 

 ant of a Huguenot family settled in Geneva since the end 

 of the 17th century, was born in that town April 28th, 1817. 

 After finishing the general educational course in his native 

 town he went to Paris, in 1835, to study science at the 

 Ecole Polytechnique, where he distinguished himself to 

 such a degree, that (as head of his class) he was promoted 

 two years later to the Ecole des Mines. He was then 

 attracted to Liebig's laboratory, in Giessen, where he 

 performed his only organic investigation on "Phthalic Acid." 

 In his twenty-third year, the position of chemist to the 

 Sevres Porcelain Works was offered to him on account 

 of his career in the Parisian Schools, but a call of the 

 Geneva Academy, to the Professorship of Chemistry and 

 Mineralogy, proved more attractive. For thirty-seven years 

 Marignac taught and worked in this position and won the 

 love and gratitude of his numerous students, especially 

 through the clearness of his lectures, illustrated by well 

 chosen and carefully arranged experiments. When, in 1878, 

 the Academy was re-organised as a University, he retired, 

 and continued his work in a laboratory arranged in his house, 

 until a painful heart disease compelled him, in 1887, to cease 



