Vol. 56.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. U 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 

 "William Whitaker, B.A., F.R.S. 



In the past year we have lo3t four Foreign Members and two 

 Foreign Correspondents. Of our Fellows we have lost three who 

 may be described as geologists or palaeontologists of world-wide 

 fame, and several others well known in onr own country or more 

 widely known for other than geological attainments. 



Prof. Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was elected a Foreign Member in 



1856, and died on August 16th, 1899. 



He was born on March 13th, 1811, and was our senior Foreign 

 Member. Though he achieved his great reputation as a chemist, and 

 held the Chair of Chemistry in the University of Heidelberg for many 

 years, he wrote (especially in his earlier years) several papers on 

 minerals and on mineral waters, as well as on various geological 

 subjects, notably on the chemical geology of Iceland. 



To the scientific world he is largely known for his work on 

 spectrum-analysis, resulting in the discovery of the elements caesium 

 and rubidium ; while to the world at large he is known by the 

 invaluable gas-burner that bears his name and the principle of 

 which he discovered. 1 



Prof. Hanns Bruno Geinitz was elected a Foreign Member in 



1857, and died on January 28th, 1900. He was Murchisozi 

 Medallist in 1878. 



After the death of Prof. Bunsen, Geinitz became the oldest of our 

 Foreign Members, and in him we lose the last who has not passed 

 through the ranks of the Foreign Correspondents. 



He was born at Altenburg in October 1814, and studied at the 

 Universities of Berlin and Jena, taking the degree of Ph.D. in 

 1837 with a thesis on the Muschelkalk of Thuringia. He went to 

 Dresden in 1838 to take part in the work of the Royal Technical 

 High School, in which he became Professor of Mineralogy and 

 Geognosy in 1850, maintaining his connexion with that establish- 

 ment until 1894. In 1857 he was made Director of the Royal 

 Mineralogical and Geological Museum, which post he also held until 

 1894. 



His work related chiefly to Saxony, and to it we are specially 



1 For a fuller notice of his life and work, see the Year-book of the Royal 

 Society for 1000, pp. 198-202. 



