Miscellaneous Intelligence. 249 



4. Aeronautics. — A new review devoted to the entire sphere 

 of aviation, documentary, historical and technical, is to be pub- 

 lished by MM. Gauthier-Villars et Cie in Paris, with the collabo- 

 ration of the French "Direction aeronautique militaire et 

 maritime." The plan is to give it an attractive form, fully 

 illustrated and such as to appeal to the general public as well 

 as to those immediately concerned. 



5. United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. — It is 

 announced that Major William Bowie of the division of geodesy 

 in the Coast Survey received the degree of Doctor of Science at 

 the recent Commencement of Trinity College at Hartford, 

 Connecticut. He also represented the International Research 

 Council at the meeting in Brussels which began on July 18. 



Obituary. 



Lord Eayleigh, the celebrated English physicist, died on June 

 30 at his home, Terling Place, Witham, Essex. . 



John AVilliam Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh, was born on 

 Nov. 12, 1842. He was graduated from Cambridge as senior 

 wrangler in 1865 and for a time was a Fellow of Trinity College. 

 In 1879 he succeeded Clerk Maxwell as Cavendish Professor of 

 experimental physics at Cambridge and continued to occupy this 

 chair until 1884 when he resigned. From 1887 to 1905 he was 

 professor of natural philosophy in the Royal Institution — a post 

 which required him to give only a few public lectures each year. 

 He was secretary of the Royal Society from 1887 to 1896 and 

 president from 1905 to 1908. In the latter year he became 

 Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and continued to 

 hold this office until his death. He is succeeded in the title by 

 his eldest son, the Hon. Robert John Strutt, who has followed in 

 his father's footsteps as a physicist and has been for some years 

 professor of physics in the Imperial College of Science, South 

 Kensington. 



Lord Rayleigh 's first scientific paper was published in 1869 

 and for fifty years there has been no interruption in the steady 

 flow of his contributions to science. There are altogether about 

 400 papers and, as J. J. Thomson says, "not one of these is 

 commonplace, and there is not one which does not raise the level 

 of our knowledge of its subject"; even in the last year of his 

 life there appeared to be no falling off in his work in either 

 quantity or quality. He was equally at home in mathematical 

 and experimental investigations and, in both, his work was 

 marked by extraordinary simplicity and directness of method. 

 Most of his experimental work was done in a private laboratory 

 in one of the wings of his country house and no physicist who 

 visited it could fail to be astonished at the primitive equipment 

 which was sufficient in Rayleigh 's hands for work of the highest 

 importance. A similar impression was made upon one when he 



