1896 - 97 .] Chairman's Opening Address. 181 
1886, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of London 
in 1892. 
Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau was horn in the year 1819. 
His experimental method of determining the velocity of light by a 
rotating wheel is known to every student of optics. Another 
experiment with which his name is honourably associated is that 
by which he determined the amount of drift of light-waves in a 
transparent medium in motion. He made some remarkable experi- 
ments on the number of interference hands observable with approxi- 
mately homogeneous light, and on light in different parts of the 
field of illumination in interference experiments. He was elected 
a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in 1875, and of 
our Society in 1892. He died September 18th, at the age of 77. 
Obituary Notices of British Honorary Fellows. 
The following two British Honorary Fellows died during last 
Session : — 
John Russell Hind was originally intended for the profession 
of engineering, for which he had little taste; and it was fortunate 
that circumstances permitted him to join the staff of the Royal 
Observatory, where he was attached to the magnetical and meteoro- 
logical department. In 1844, he left Greenwich to take charge of 
Bishop’s observatory at Regent’s Park. At that time Neptune 
was not discovered, and he began, at that observatory, to form 
ecliptical charts of stars, with the view of detecting the object 
that disturbed the motion of Uranus. The comparison of these 
charts with the heavens led to the discovery of a number of small 
planets, some variable stars, and a few comets. His facility as a 
computer led to his selection for the post of Superintendent of the 
Nautical Almanac when a vacancy occurred in 1853. He received 
the medals of the Royal and Astronomical Societies. He was a 
Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, a Fellow of the 
Royal Society of London, and was elected a Fellow of this Society 
in 1895. He died December 23rd, 1895. 
William Robert Grove was horn at Swansea in 1811. From 
the age of 25 to 50, Grove, though practising the profession of the 
law, was actively engaged in scientific work. Prior to the publica- 
tion of his great work On the Correlation of the Physical Forces 
