IN MEMORIAM 
Rev. SAMUEL ASHTON THOMPSON YATES, M.A. 
this page we record, with heartfelt sense of loss, the death of the 
Reverend Samuel Ashton Thompson Yates, the founder of the 
laboratories called after his name. 
Mr. Thompson Yates leaves many who will mourn him, but there 
can be none who feel more deeply than we that with him a friend and 
helper has passed from us. His life was characterized by generous actions, 
and the range of his sympathies was very wide. He gave greatly from his 
purse and from his time to alleviate the hardship of poverty in the great 
city in which he lived. Possessing finely cultivated taste in art he loved to 
recognize and encourage the best of contemporary art in painting and in 
sculpture. His house contained many examples of his discernment of 
artistic genius. A bibliophile and a collector of coins and medals, the rarity 
alone of an object never sufficed to attract him, for him it had to possess 
beauty as well. He was much interested in early glass, and issued a volume 
on examples of stained window work, as illustrated chiefly in some French 
cathedrals. He had travelled much in France, and was very fond of that 
country and its people. 
His interest in Natural Science was that of a cultured and broad- 
minded layman. The memory of his visits to these laboratories will 
always be treasured by the workers whom he met in them. A word of 
encouragement, an interesting query, a sign of approval, a suggestion of 
some improvement, a chat about the work going on, and an enquiry as to 
what would be undertaken, these were the unfailing signs of his watch- 
fulness over the career of the building, that he not only founded and 
equipped, but constantly helped to keep effective and maintain. Had it 
not been for him, the work that has been issued in these reports would 
never have been done. Although but a feeble tribute to his memory, there 
could therefore in one sense be no more appropriate memorial to him than 
this page. 
C. S. S. 
R. B. 
