4 
Walter Franl- Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
presidency of the Chemical Society, and in 1882 the fellowship of the Royal 
Society. But for our present purposes the main point is this: that Walter Weldon 
made his discovery while totally unacquainted with the methods of quantitative 
chemical analysis and possibly because of this ignorance. He was accustomed to 
attribute the discovery to a peculiar source, but those who knew well the immense 
facility of his son for closely observing phenomena out of his own field of research, 
and rapidly studying their interaction, always probing things, whether in the 
physical universe, or in mechanism, to their basis in simple laws of nature, will at 
once realise the source of the father's inspiration, and the heritage to the son*. 
If Walter Weldon's discovery brought him wealth, he was generous to a fault. 
Like his son he appears to have scarcely known the value of money, except as a 
means of giving pleasure to his friends. His early death in September, 1885, two 
years after his son's marriage, cut off a career far from completed. But his life had 
been lived to the full, each instant crowded with physical, intellectual, or emotional 
activity. It is impossible to regard Walter Weldon's character without seeing 
whence Raphael Weldon drew much of his nature. The intense activity, the keen 
sympathy and generosity, the reticence, the creative power in many channels, the 
artistic appreciation f, were common to father and son. Nay, perhaps to give 
* Eaphael Weldon delighted during his many voyages in spending days in the engine-room ; he 
made a study of the various types of engines, and his knowledge in this respect was not without service 
to the Marine Biological Association. He even studied the use of indicator diagrams. His first plan 
with a new bicycle was to take it part from part, so that he could fully understand its working and the 
nature of possible repairs. The microscope was not merely an instrument to work with, but a familiar 
illustration of optical laws, so that he knew at once how to modify each detail to suit special needs. 
Over and over again, talking over physical problems he would say: "Well, I don't know what you 
people think, but it has always seemed to me that" — and then would come some luminous suggestion 
or apt criticism of a proposed investigation in a field wholly outside the biological. A striking instance 
of this occurred only in the autumn of last year. Many friends had already gone to see the eclipse, 
most people were talking about it, and Weldon was left in sultry Oxford, fighting out a theory of 
determinantal inheritance. It was settled that a holiday should be taken, the determinants put on 
one side and a continuous photographic record made of the eclipse. Neither Weldon nor his colleague 
knew anything about sun-photography, and miserable were their first attempts. But gradually the 
objective, the telephoto lens and the focal shutter were worked out ; a camera which had done yeoman 
service in photographing snail habitats became a wonderful structure, and a whole series of colour 
screens prepared from biological sources were tested and criticised. It was Weldon who obtained the 
first clean cut photograph showing sun spots clearly and admitting of definite enlargement. But what 
is more, each developmental stage of his sun camera had been thought out physically, and he knew 
why he took it. The trained physical astronomer would have found the stages already made, and a 
posteriori each would have been obvious, but this was the case of a biologist with insight into other 
fields and a striking power of making things work. 
t An interesting illustration of the relationship is given in Mary Hoivitt, an Autobiography, 1889 
(p. 184). The child Eaphael, then 10 years, had gone with his father and the Howitts to visit the 
Wiertz Gallery at Brussels. William Howitt writes: "On our first entrance I was quite startled, I 
did not think I should at all like the paintings, they appeared so huge, so wild and so fantastic. But 
by degrees I began to see a great mind and purpose in them Little Eaphael came and took my 
hand as we left the gallery, and said : ' Mr Howitt, I think Wiertz could not be a good man.' 
I asked him why. He answered, 'I think he could not be a good man, or he would not have painted 
some things there.' I told him he might naturally think so, but that a vast deal was to be allowed 
for his education. No doubt Wiertz thought all was right, and that many of his pictures contained 
