OBITUARY NOTICES. 
353 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
THE LATE WILLIAM FROUDE, F.R.S. 
By the death, on May 6, 1879, at the Cape of Good Hope, whither 
he had gone for the benefit of his health, of William Froude, f.r.s., 
England has lost one of her most distinguished mechanicians and 
engineers, Devonshire one of her greatest scientific worthies, and 
the Plymouth Institution one of the most notable and valued of 
her honorary members. Mr. Froude came of a remarkable 
family. His elder brother was the well-known Eichard Hurrell 
Froude ; his younger James Anthony Froude, the historian, also 
one of the honorary members of this society. Born in 1810, 
Mr. William Froude was one of the pupils of Cardinal Newman, 
at Oriel College, Oxford, and took a first class in mathematics. 
Educated as a civil engineer, his rare abilities very early made 
themselves known, and he was for several years the constant and 
valued friend of the late Mr. Brunell. When in 1846, on account 
of his father's failing health, he retired from the ordinary duties of 
his profession, it was only to engage in the solution of some of the 
most complex and abstruse problems connected with the motion of 
fluids and the behaviour of floating bodies. These at length 
became methodized into an investigation on the rolling of ships, 
which he pursued year after year at his residence, Chelson Cross, 
Torquay, without personal reward of any kind, but with such 
recognition from the Admiralty as enabled him to carry it out 
in the most complete way as a national work of the highest value. 
Thoroughly versed in all the more distinctly scientific conditions of 
his subject, he was also a complete master of its technical relations 
— himself a skilled mechanician of the rarest excellence, and one 
of the most conscientious and ingenious of experimentalists. " No 
workman in any art ever combined in greater proportion, few in so 
eminent a degree, the three properties of culture, of science, and 
of practice. His hands were as skilful as his creative brain was 
active." For his " researches on the behaviour of ships, their oscilla- 
tions, their resistance, and their propulsion," Mr. Froude, in 1876, 
received the gold medal of the Eoyal Society, of which he had 
VOL. VII. z 
