1910.) Anniversary Address by Sir A. Gevkie. 267 
enquiries embodied in his “ English Men of Science.” Confident in the 
results of these researches, he proceeded after the manner of “ the surveyor 
of a new country who endeavours to fix in the first instance, as truly as he 
can, the position of several cardinal points.” His results in this quest were 
given in his “ Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development,” published 
in 1883. A further contribution was made by him in 1889, when his work 
on “ Natural Inheritance” appeared. His subsequent papers and essays on 
“ Kugenics ” have still further stimulated enquiry into a subject of such deep 
interest and transcendent importance in all efforts to improve the physical 
and mental condition of the human race. 
It has seemed to the Council fitting that a man who has devoted his life 
with unwearied enthusiasm to the study and improvement of many depart- 
ments of natural knowledge, whose career has been distinguished by the 
singleness and breadth of its aims, and by the generosity with which he has 
sought to further them, should receive from the Royal Society its highest 
award in the Copley Medal. 
RUMFORD MEDAL. 
The Rumford Medal has been awarded to Prof. Heinrich Rubens in recog- 
nition of the value of his researches in radiation. For many years he has 
been engaged in the experimental investigation of optical radiations of very 
long wave-length. In the course of this work he elaborated, in conjunction 
with Prof. E. F. Nichols, a method of isolating pencils of nearly homo- 
geneous rays, using the fact that a non-metallic substance reflects very 
copiously waves of the same length as those to which it is opaque. If then a 
pencil of rays of mixed wave-lengths is reflected several times to and fro 
between mirrors of the same kind of substance, the rays finally emerging 
(the “ Reststrahlen ”) have the wave-lengths of the kinds of light which the 
substance refuses to transmit. The light of other wave-lengths has been 
transmitted freely at each incidence, and by a sufficient number of reflections 
is ultimately removed from the pencil. By using different substances as 
reflectors, Prof. Rubens has isolated infra-red light of various wave-lengths 
up to as much as 96, or about 0-1 of a millimetre ; while, on the other hand, 
purely electric waves have been produced of wave-lengths as small as 
2 millimetres. He has thus enormously extended our knowledge of the infra- 
red spectrum. Moreover, in conjunction with colleagues, he has investigated 
the absorbing and reflecting powers of substances for these long wave-length 
rays. He has shown that, for radiation of wave-length even less than ten times 
the wave-lengths in the visible spectrum, the reflecting and absorbing powers 
