1910.1 Anniversary Address by Sir A. Gevkie. 271 
SYLVESTER MEDAL. 
The Medal which perpetuates the name and mathematical prowess of 
James Joseph Sylvester has this year been assigned to Dr. Henry Frederick 
Baker, in recognition of his work in the Theory of Functions, wherein he 
has shown himself to be a profound analyst. His book on the Abelian 
Functions, published in 1897, is a classic, and probably no better guide to 
the analytical development of pure mathematics has appeared during the 
last three-quarters of a century. While basing the argument of the work 
on the methods of Riemann, he never loses sight of the arithmetical ideas 
which we owe to Kronecker, Dedekind, and Weber, or of the geometrical 
notions brought to light by the labours of Clebsch, Gordan, Noether, and 
Klein. The critical insight which was thus in evidence marked him out a 
few years ago as the editor of Sylvester's Collected Papers. This work, 
which, with the approaching issue of the fourth and last volume, may be 
said to be complete, has been necessarily a difficult task, which besides 
making demands upon the resources of an accomplished mathematician has 
entailed no little editorial labour. Dr. Baker, by explanatory and critical 
observations, and by frequent ameliorations of the text, has done much to 
assist mathematical students. His scholarly work has resulted in a faithful 
record of the course of Sylvester’s thought. It seems eminently fitting that 
the Sylvester Medal should be given to one who has erected so lasting a 
memorial to the great mathematician. 
HuGuHes MEDAL. 
To Prof. John Ambrose Fleming the Hughes Medal has been awarded. 
For thirty years he has been actively engaged in researches in experimental 
physics, chiefly in the technical applications of electricity. He was an early 
investigator of the properties of the glow lamp, and elucidated the unilateral 
conductivity presented in its partial vacuum between glowing carbon and 
adjacent metal, a phenomenon which has been linked up recently with the 
important subject of the specific discharges of electrons by different materials. 
He has published in the scientific and technical press, and in technical text- 
books, many admirable experimental investigations and valuable expositions 
in the applications of electricity, as, for example, to electric transformers and 
wireless telegraphy. Of special interest and value for theory were the 
important results concerning the alterations in the physical properties of 
matter, such as the remarkable increase in the electric conductivity of 
