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Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, Vol. 105, No. 734 (Jun. 2, 1924), pp. i-xv Published by: The Royal Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/94287 . Accessed: 03/05/2014 20:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Royal Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.78.56 on Sat, 3 May 2014 20:00:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Obituary Notices of Fellows DeceasedSource: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of aMathematical and Physical Character, Vol. 105, No. 734 (Jun. 2, 1924), pp. i-xvPublished by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/94287 .

Accessed: 03/05/2014 20:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Royal Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of theRoyal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character.

http://www.jstor.org

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OBITUARY NOTICES

OF

FELLOWS DECEASED.

VOL. CV.-A. . a

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

ALEXANDER CRuM BROWN ...................................................... i

THOMAS HENRY TIZARD (with portrait) . . ..............................X. vi

HBRBERT McLEOD .... X

JOHN ALLEN HARKER .... Xi

GEORG HERMANN QUINCKE .......... .......... ... ,.X, , Xiii

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ALEXANDER CRUM BROWN, 1838-1922.

CRIJM BROWN was born in Edinburgh on 26th March, 1838, his father being Dr. John Brown (1784-1858), minister of Broughton Place United Presbyterian Church. Dr. John Brown was twice married. His son by the first marriage was John Brown, M.D. (1810-1882), well known as an Edinburgh physician, but who earned a wider fame as the author of Rab and His Friends, Horce Subsecive, and other literary essays. Crum Brown, the only son of the second marriage, was named after his maternal grandfather, Alexander Crum, of Thornliebank, a merchant and manufacturer of Glasgow. His mother's brother, Walter Crum, F.R.S. (1796-1867), was a chemist of note, and it is probably due to the influence of this uncle that Cruim Brown's thoughts were specially directed to chemistry amongst the various subjects of his university studies.

Crum Brown's education was received in the Royal High School, Edin- burgh, where he spent five years, followed by one year at Mill Hill School. In 1854 he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated as M.A. in 1858 and as M.D. in 1861. During the same time he read for the science degree in London University, and in 1862 he had the distinction of being the first candidate on whom the Doctorate of Science of the University of London was conferred. After his graduation as Doctor of Medicine in Edinburgh he pursued the study of chemistry in Germany, first under Bunsen at Heidelberg, and then at Marburg under Kolbe. In 1863 he was licensed as an Extra- academical Lecturer in Chemistry by the Uni'versity of Edinburgh, and in 1869 he succeeded Lyon Playfair in the Chair of Chemistry at the University, holding office till his retirement in 1908.

Crum Brown's scientific work bears a marked individual stamp. His mind was essentially philosophic and speculative, and he was specially interested in symbolic representation, as is manifest in his thesis for the M.D. degree, pre- sented at the age of twenty-three. This was not a commonplace report of cases, but was entitled " On the Theory of Chemical Combination," and showed him to be a pioneer in scientific thought. In this thesis he expresses his purpose to sketch the history of the law of Equivalence or Substitution, and the law of Polarity, "to discuss the bearing of recent discoveries on them; and to endeavour to determine what is the form in which they may best be expressed, so as to include all the facts, and be, as nearly as possible, a strict generalisation from them." In the course of the discussion of types and radicals he evolved a system of graphic formulation in all essentials identical with that in use at the present day. His formulke were the first to represent clearly and satisfactorily both the 'valency and the linking of atoms in organic compounds.

VOL. CV.-A. b

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ii Obituaory Notices of Fellows deceased.

In 1864 Crum Brown published an important paper on the " Theory of Isomeric Compounds,"* in which, making free use of his graphic formula-, he discussed the various types of isomerism, paying special attention to that of fumaric and malefe acids, and in general, to compounds that are "abso- lutely isomeric" (i.e., which possess the same constitutional formula). In continuation of his systematic work he publishedt in 1866 a paper " On the Classification of Chemical Substances by means of Generic Radicals," and in 1867 a paper " On an Application of Mathematics in Chemistry," which bears a superficial resemblance to Sir Benjamin Brodie's " Calculus of Chemical Operations," but di-fers from it in method, object, and result. He uses a functional notation to express certain general and serial relations in those cases where the common atomic notation is inconvenient or obscure.

Although Crum Brown apparently never contemplated the practice of medicine, his training as a medical student gave him an interest in physiology and pharmacology which led him to collaborate during 1867-8 with T. R. Fraser, a distinguished medical graduate a few years younger than himself, in a pioneering investigation of fundamental importance on the connection between chemical constitutioli and physiological action.4 Their method consisted " in performing upon a substance a chemical operation which shall introduce a known change into its constitution, and then examining and com- paring the physiological action of the substance before and after the change." The operation considered was the addition of ethyl iodide to various alkaloids, the iodides (and the corresponding sulphates) thus obtained being compared with the hydrochlorides of the original alkaloids. Striking regularities were observed, amongst others " that when a nitrile [tertiary] base possesses a strychnia-like action, the salts of the corresponding ammonium [quaternary] bases have an action identical with curare.'

Crum Brown's name was now well known and in his application for the Edinburgh Chair in 1869 he received the support of nearly all the prominent chemists of this country, and many of the Continent.

For some time after his University appointment he published little, but in 1873 he began a series of investigations of the organic sulphur compounds,? particularly derivatives of trimethyl-sulphine, which occupied him for several years, after which there was an intermission in his scientific output. In 1890 he entered a new period of chemical activity. A theoretical paper on the relation of optical activity to the character of the radicals united to the asym- metric carbon atomll was published, simultaneously with Guye's memoir on

* 'Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. xxiii, p. 707. t 'Tran. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. xxiv, p. 331. t 'Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. xxv, pp. 151 and 693. ? Crurn Brown and Letts, 'Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. XXViii, p. 571, and various papers

in 'Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.' ' Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. xvii, p. 181.

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Alexander Crum Brown. iii

the same subject. About the same time began the series of researches on the synthesis of bibasic acids by the electrolysis of ester-salts.* In 1892 he pub- lished, in conjunction with John Gibson, the well-known rule for determining the position in the benzene nucleus taken up by an entering radical with respect to one already present.t

No mention has been made of minor chemical papers dealing with practical matters, nor of the numerous and interesting addresses which he frome time to time delivered. Amongst them a very clear account of the rusting of iron may be noted.j His view of the position of chemnistry in the domain of the mathenatical-physical sciences is stated in his presidential address to the Chemical Section of the British Association in 1874: "One thing we can distinctly see-we are struggling towards a theory of Chemistry. Such a theory we do not possess. What we a-re sometimes pleased to dignify with that name is a collection of generalisations of various degrees of imperfection. We cannot attain to a real theory of Chemistry until we are able to connect the science by some hypothesis with the general theory of Dynamics. . . . Chemistry will then become a branch of Applied Mathematics, but it will not cease to be an experimental science. Mathematics may enable us retrospectively to justify results obtained by experiment, may point out useful lines of research, and even sometimes predict entirely novel discoveries, but will not revolutionise our laboratories. Mathematical will not replace Chemical analysis."

Crum Brown had forty years ago very modern views as to crystal structure (Art. " Molecule,"' 'Encyclopeedia Britannica,' 9th ed., 1883): " It is perhaps scarcely correct to speak of a molecular structure of [crystalline] solids at all. Solids are no doubt composed of atoms and those atoms are evidently arranged in what may be called a tactical order. When the solid is fused or dissolved or volatilised, it breaks into molecules, each repetition of the pattern being ready to become an independent thing under favourable circumstances. It may be urged that the cleavage of crystails indicates that they possess a mole- cular structure, but a tactical or pattern-like arrangement of atoms may easily be supposed to present planes of easier separation without the assumption of really independent molecules." Many years before the work of Laue or Bragg, Crum Brown, in conversation with the writer, mentioned that he had constructed a model of the structure of sodium chloride, each chlorine atom having six equidistant sodium neighbours and each sodium atom six equidistant chlorine neighbours, the type of structure being that now attributed to the crystalline salt.

Crum Brown never lost his interest in physiology, and at various times he made valuable contributions to that science. One of these was a study of the

* Crum Brown and Walker, 'Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. xxxvi, p. 211 ; vol. xxxvi, p. 361.

t 'Chem. Soo. Trans.,' vol. lxi, p. 367. I 'Jour. Iron and Steel Inst.,' 1888, p. 129.

b 2

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iv Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased.

sense of rotation and the function of the semi-circular canals of the internal ear* (1873-74). His work was contemporaneous with that of Mach and Breuer, but his explanation went beyond theirs, suggesting the function of the ampullke and showing how complete perception of rotation could be secured by the actual arrangement of the canals in the two ears. The relation between the movements of the eyes and the movements of the head also engaged his attention, and on this subject he wrote several papers. The analysis of vowel sounds, too, at one time interested him, and he invented a " talking bottle " which, when blown, emitted vowel sounds varying with the stopping of the holes with which it was provided.

Several published papers show his serious attention to certain branches of mathematics; for example, one on interlacing surfaces,t and anotbher on the partition of a parallelepiped into tetrahedra, the corners of which coincide with the corners of the parallelepiped.j A favourite hobby was the practical construction of three-dimensional models, both crystallographic and mathe- matical, a gluepot on the hob and a plentiful stock of cardboard being recog- nised features of his retiring room in the University. In literature his reading was extensive, and his knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, was altogether exceptional.

A man of his great and varied gifts could scarcely prove other than a stimu- lating teacher. His lectures on organic chemistry to advanced students were revelations of the working of scientific method. He selected a few topics and dealt with them in full detail, never letting the student lose sight of the end to which the researches he described were directed, nor of the logical thread running through them. He delighted in analogies and parables, and exercised the greatest ingenuity in seeking from familiar life parallels to the scientific lesson which he wished to inculcate. A characteristic example may be found in his Presidential Address to the Chemical Society,? where he likens the behaviour of a quantity of salt in solution to the doings of a cattle-holding conmmunity.

His turn for business was almost as notable as his talent for speculative thought. Outside the University, his Church and the Royal Society of Edinburgh claimed his chief practical interests. In Synod and Assembly he was eagerly listened to for the pith and wisdom of his utterances. His service on the Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh extended to forty-four years in all, during twenty-six of which he acted as one of the secretaries and for six as a vice-president. The Society awarded him the Makdougall- Brisbane Prize for the period 1866-8 (in conjunction with Dr. T. R. Fraser), and the Keith Prize for the period 1873-5. His loyalty to the Society, in

* 'Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.,' vol. viii, pp. 255 and 370; vol. xv, p. 149. t Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 382. :? 'Trans. Roy. Soc., Edin.,' vol. xxxvii, p. 711. ? 'Chein. Soc. Trans.,' vol. lxi, p. 481.

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Alexander Crunt Brown. v

whose Transactions and Proceedings he published nearly all his researches, had no doubt something to do with the scant recognition of his work, their circulation amonigst chemists being very limited. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879, and had honorary degrees conferred on him by all four Scottish Universities. He occupied the Presidential Chair of the Chemistry Section of the British Association in 1874 and of the Chemical Society in 1891-3.

Crum Brown presented the refreshing and fascinating contrast of a simple character combined with a brilliant and subtle intellect. He possessed a keen wit, tempered by the most delightful pawky humour; being besides a born raconteur, he shone in social gatherings, especially at his own hospitable table. He was generous and kindly, and his great learning was accompanied by a fine modesty.

A pair of dark, sparkling, deep-set eyes formed the most striking feature of his appearance, and were a fit index of his vivacious temperament. Though physically not very robust, he spent much of his holiday time in tramping in the Highlhnds and on the Continent, and was rarely ill. He married early in his professional life Jane Porter, a daughter of the Rev. James Porter, Drumlee, Co. Down, whose death two years after his retirement from University duties overshadowed the last decade of his life. Failing bodily health confined him to the house, and for over seven years he had most unwillingly to regard himself as an invalid. His mind lost little of its activity. He read much and amused himself with original methods of knitting. He enjoyed conversing with his old friends, and even when increasing weakness made this somewhat of an eflort for him, he would still, with an inextinguishable twinkle of the eye, retail some quaint story or interesting reminiscence. He died peacefully on 28th October, 1922, leaving to all who knew him a legacy of very pleasant memories.

J. W.

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THOMAS HENRY TIZARD, 1.839-1924.

THE death of Captain T. H. Tizard, C.B., F.R.S., R.N., occurred on 17th February, 1924, at Kingston-on-Thames, at the age of 85. Entering the Navy as Master's Assistant 70 years ago, he served in the Baltic during the Russian War, 1854-6. On promotion to 2nd Master, in 1860, Tizard received his first appointment in the Surveying Service and joined H.M.S. " Rifleman " in China. Seven years' experience of surveying the reefs and shoals abounding in the South China Sea between Singapore and Manilla, laid the foundations of his subsequent reputationi as an accomplished surveyor. For three years he was in command of the schooner " Saracen,"> acting as tender to the " Rifle- man." He was promoted to the rank of Master in June, 1864, and three years later was invalided home suffering severely from dysentery. As Navigating Lieutenant and Senior Assistant Surveyor of II.M. Ships "Newport" and "Sheerwater, " commanded by Captain (later Sir George) Nares from 1868 to 1872, he directed the laying of a submarine cable between Malta and Alex- andria and was engaged in a much-needed survey of the Gulf of Suez for the benefit of the vast volume of shipping about to use the new canal route through the Red Sea. During this time it occurred to him to bring out the " Table of Chords"; this is in daily use on board every surveying vessel. An interest- ing an-d important series of observations on the surface and undercurrent in the Straits of Gibraltar set at rest the vexed question of movement of those waters.

Towards the end of 1872 the appointment of Captain Nares to command the famous " Challenger " Expedition led to Tizard's transference to the ",Challenger." An excellent surveyor and navigator, a man of strong per- sonalty and resourcefulness, and a master hand at handling a ship, a better selection could not have been made. This appointment now opened to him the great opportunity of his life in bringing him into close touch with ocean- ographyanditsleadingprofessors. The"Challenger"Expeditionfortheinvesti- gation of the physical conditions of the ocean and the distribution of marine life was an epoch in oceanography, resulting in a vast increase of knowledge and in the progressive improvement of apparatus and methods of research. As Navigating Officer and Chief Assistant Surveyor, Tizard's duties involved collaboration with the leader of the expedition and the chief of the scientific staff in decisions bearing on the carrying out of the objects of the expedition. Within the broad outlines of the Instructions drawn up by the hydrographer of the Admiralty and the Royal Society Committee appointed for that purpose, the organisation of the work of each cruise, the stations to be occupied and the nature of the observations suitable for each station, necessitated consultations

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Aft"

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Thomas Henry Tizard. vii

in which Tizard took a prominent part. The placing of the ship in the positions decided upon and their accurate determination astronomically, would be the ordinary duty of the navigating officer, but this was only a small portion of Tiza.rd's activities. From the outset he closely identified himself with every object with which the Expedition was concerned. As time went on the influ- ence he exerted was increasingly apparent, and on the change of captains, which took place when Captain Nares left the ship to take command of the Arctic Expedition in 1875, Tizard's services to the-" Challenger " Expedition had become so indispensable that no question of his being spared for the Arctic could arise. The Expedition would never have been the success that it was, but for the ability and cheeriness of Tizard.

Promoted to the rank of Staff Commander in July, 1874, he remained in the "Challenger " until her paying off in 1876, and was for three years employed at the Admiralty on the narrative of the voyage and its oceanographical and hydrographical results, together with a contribution to the meteorology of Japan. Little at that time was known about the latter, but from the meteoro- logical records kept for a number of years at each of the lighthouses and light- ships a very valuable series of observations had been collected. These observa- tions were analysed and tabulated by Tizard, and from the mean monthly results diagrams were constructed showing the yearly curves.

In 1879 Staff Commander Tizard again resumed active surveying duties afloat, serving in the " Porcupine " on the survey of the coast of England before taking charge of the survey himself the following year. From 1880-82 he was in command of the hired vessel, "Knight Errant," and in the latter year commis- sioned a new vessel, H.M.S. "Triton," for surveying work on the east coast of England. During the nine years that he held this command he wrote many papers of scientific value and interest, some of which were published by the Admiralty. One of the earliest of these, on deep-sea exploration in the Faroe Channel in 1882, was read at the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in it Tizard showed that his observations established the exist- ence of a continuous ridge across the Faroe Channel, which was named "Wyville-Thomson Ridge." This ridge separates the cold from the warm area, and had been predicted from the " Challenger's " report as far back as 1876. Tizard thoroughly investigated it by means of cross-sections, at each end of which serial temperatures were observed and diagrams constructed showing the distribution of the temperature from the surface to the bottom, the form of the ridge, &c., besides obtaining a series of dredgings and trawlings on top of and on each side of the ridge.

The fact was also established that there is a regular interchange of the water across the Wyville-Thomson ridge, the Atlantic water flowing north-east into the Arctic basin on the surface and so far down as the ridge permits ; whilst over the deepest part of the ridge there is a small outflow of Arctic water into the Atlantic, which, though of infinitely less volume than the water moving

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viii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased.

north-east, yet appears to be sufficient to enable the bottom water of the Arctic basin, imimediately adjacent to the ridge, to retain its coldness.

A lecture on "Marine Surveying," delivered at the School of Military Enginieering, Chatham, was printed in the Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers. Tizard's report on his survey of the outer part of the Thames Estuary, carried ouit in 1889, contains information on the tidal datums used at various places on the East Coast of England and Scotland duiring the period covered by his survey. Two years later he compiled and published 'Notes on the Tidal Datums and Levels on the River Thames and Estuary,' thus bringing together in a convenienit form for reference full information on tidal datums over a large part of British coasts.

In 1890, Tizard published in' Nature ' an in teresting and highly important article on. " The Thames Estuiary," in which he gave an account of the changes in. the channels of the estuary from the commencement of the nineteenth century. He shows these changes to be of two kinds, namielv, permanent changes and periodic clianges, and illustrates them by a series of diagrams. The formation of the banks of the estuary and the influences operative on them are also dealt with, and the interesting phenomenon of the opening up and disappearance of swatchwavs, with special reference to Duke 'of Edinburgh Channel, is discussed. The article deals very fully with questions affecting the estuary of the Thames, and is one of great permanent value to all those whose duty it is to maintain the channels in the estuary of a river of such national importance.

Of his other writings, an article in 'Nature' on " Sumner Lines " may be mentioned; an article on "Arctic Exploration " and a chronological list of the officers conducting British maritime discoveries and surveys, together with the names of the vessels employed, from the earliest times until 1900, is an interesting compilation.

Tizard attained the rank of Staff-Captain in February, 1889. Two years afterwards he was selected for the position of Assistant-Hvdrographer of the Navv, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, serving on the Council from 1902 to 1904. He was placed on the retired list, with the rank of Captain, in December, 1896, but continued to serve at the Admiralty, and in June, 1899, he was awarded the honour of a civil C.B. As a member of the Joint Committee of Royal Society and Royal Geographical Society, dealing with the equipment and instructions for the conduct of the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-41, Captain Tizard's practical knowledge of the conditions of Antarctic navigation gained during the voyage of the " Challenger," and his wide experience on all matters connected with scientific expeditions, rendered him a particularly useful member of the Committee.

The question of the feasibility of making an alternative harbour on the eastern side of the rock of Gibraltar having been raised in the House of Commons, Captain Tizard was charged to report on the matter, in conjunction with Mr. Shield, of the Works Department of the Admiralty, and in April, 1902, proceeded

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Thomas Henry Tizard. ix

to Gibraltar for that purpose. The report was rendered to the Board of Admiralty in June, for which he received a letter of thanks from the Admiralty. Captain Tizard continued to serve as Assistant Hydrographer until the autumn of 1907, when he was awarded a special pension in recognition of his valuable public services. After his retirement he continued for some time to write and edit various Admialty publications, among which 'Tides and Tidal Streams of the British Isles' was perhaps the most important; this work he re-wrote entirely.

The last, and not the least, public service performed by Tizard was to report and prepare plans to assist the Admiralty Committee, under the chairmanshipof Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, in 1912, to arrive at a conclusion relative to the tactics employed by Nelson at Trafalgar. The investigation and co-ordination of all records from ships' logs and other sources enabled Tizard to prepare a track chart and three plans, which the Committee in its report states to be "the first and only plans representing any phase of the Battle of Trafalgar which have been exactly drawn to scale, and in which the positions assigned to particular ships in the British Fleet have been settled in accordance with the evidence contained in the logs arnd journals." A year or two before his death, Tizard received a further mark of recognition from the Board of Admiralty by the award of a Gxreenwich Hospital Pension. - Tizard had the power of great concentration of thought and application, together with a well-balanced judgment, due to habitual caution. His chief recreation was reading, and his geographical knowledge was world-wide. Gifted with a retentive memory, he was able during his service at the Admiralty to utilize to an uncommon degree the store of information to be derived from a close study of the Admiralty Sailing Directions. He was always ready to explain any scientific difficulty that occurred in the mind of a brother officer, and with his keen sense of humour was a genial companion and messmate.

Captain Tizard married in 1881, Mary Elizabeth, daughter of W. H. Churchward, C.E., who survives him.

A. AI. F.

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x

HERBERT McLEOD, 1841-1923.

PROF. HERBERT MOcLEOD, who died on October 1, 1923 was the son of Bentley McLeod, a brewer, and was born at Stoke Newington on Februarv 19, 1841. He was educated at Stockwell Grammar School and at a private school at: Deal, and in 1855 came to London and began the study of chemistry at the Panopticon under Prof. G. F. Ansell. In 1856 he entered the Royal College of Chemistry as a student under Prof. A. W. H{ofmann, to whom he became Junior Assistant in 1858. From 1860 to 1871 he was Assistant Chemist in the Royal School of Mines under Profs. A. W. Hofmarn and E. Frankland, and in the latter year was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill, and held that position until 1901, when he was retired.

He was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society in 1868 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1881, and was a member of Council from 1887 to 1889. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry and a member of the Society of Chemical Industry. He was also a member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and a member of the German Chemical Society, and was an original member of the Physical Society of London. He was President of the Chemical Section of the British Association at the ldinburgh Meeting in 1892, and was made an Honorary Graduate, LL.D., of St. Andrews University in 1907.

He wrote, in conjunction with Prof. E. Frankland, the preliminary report of the Committee appointed for the determination of the gases. existing in, solution in well waters--' British Association Report,' 39, 1869. In 1874 he revised the fifth edition of the late William Allen Miller's 'Elements of Chemistry,' and in 1877 Part I of the sixth edition of that work.

He contributed the article on " Specific Gravity " to the first edition of the 'Dictionary of Applied Chemistry' (Longmans, Green and Co.), 1905, and was tbe author or joint author of a large number of papers in the' Proceedings' and the 'Philosophical. Transactions.'

McLeod was an excellent teacher and a good lecturer, sound, accurate, and well informed. As befitted the lecturer's assistant of Hofman and Frankland, his lectures were admirably illustrated by experiments. He was an expert manipulator, and a demonstration rarely failed in his hands. Indeed, experi- mental illustration in connection with teaching became almost a passion with him, and he spent much time and trouble in devising suitable demonstrations.

In 1902 McLeod undertook the direction of the Royal Society's 'Catalogue of Scientific Papers,' having already given many years of arduous work to this undertaking, and no selection could have been more opportune. He had already accepted the responsibility of reading the Catalogue proofs as far back as 1888, and in addition to this work he also prepared the subject-index to

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John Allen IHarker. xi

its papers dating between. 1.800 and 1900. He brought to the task a meticulous sense of accuracy, and was an ideal bibliographer-careful, patient, and pains- taking. When ill-health in 1915 necessitated his retirement from further active participation in this work, he had seen the Author Catalogue for the period 1883-1900 in great part through the press.

McLeod is perhaps best known for his apparatus for the measurement of low pressures of gas, which has proved of the very greatest service when estimating the pressure of a gas when its tension is so low that the indication of the barometer cannot safely be relied upon. His Sunshine Recorder, in which the sun's light and heat from its unclouded disc are concentrated by means of a glass ball on prepared paper, whereby the duration of the sunshine is indicated by the trail of charred. paper, is also well known, and is in very general use.

In 1888 McLeod married Amelia Sarah, daughter of John Woodley, brewer's cooper, of London. She survives him, together with her three sons and two daughters.

T. E. T.

JOHN ALLEN HARKER, 1870-1923.

DR. HARKER was born at Alston, Cumberland, in 1870, the son of the Rev. John Harker, Congregational Minister. He was educated at Stockport Grammar School and the Owens College, Manchester, of which he became Dalton Chemical Scholar and Berkeley Fellow in Physics. He obtained the degree of Ph.D. after a Research Course at Tilbingen..

Towards the end of the last century it was realized by Sir Andrew Noble, among others, that we in England were without any temperature standards above 1.000 C. Callendar and Griffiths had developed the platinum ther- mometer and shown how to standardize it over a wide range by calibration at three temperatures, and its uitility for high-temperature work had been pointed out.

Holborn, at the Reichsanstalt, working with Day, was engaged in his comparison of the gas thermometer with thermo-couples with a view to using these for high-temperature work, while Chappuis was carrying out experiments connecting the mercury standards of the Bureau. des Poids et Mesures with the air thermometer.

The suggestion was made that a series of platinum thermometers should

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xii Obituory Notices of Fellows deceased.

be incluLded in the comparison, and the Kew Committee, helped by the generosity of Sir Andrew Noble, selected Harker fo.r this work. After testing his apparatus at Kew, he settled at Sevres, and there carried out, along with Chappuis, his well-known investigation, in which the temperature range was extended to 200? C. and Callendar's difference formula shown to hold with a high degree of accuracy. He had previously been engaged at Kew installing, under the supervision of Griffitlis, the apparatus required for platinum ther- mometry in an outbuilding attached to the room used for testing clinical thermometers. On the completion of his work at Sevres he returned to Kew, and on the establishment of the National Phvsical Laboratory at the end of 1899 became a member of the staff, along witIL Dr. Chree and others working at Kew.

The transfer to Teddington delayed his work, but in duie time he was installed at Bushy House as Head of the Heat Division. As a gift from Sir Andrew Noble an air thermometer, a replica of that used by Holborn and Day, had been obtained, and Harker set about extending the range of comparison with platintiruL thermometers up to 1,1000 C. The paper giving an account of his work appears in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 1904.

More work on measurement of high temperatures followed. Harker was appointed Jolule StuLdent of the Royal Society, and in 1905 communicated an important paper on a new type of furnace, with a redetermination of the melting-point of platinum, for which he found the value 1,710? C. In this furnace he made use of the fact that certain refractory substances which are insulators when cold become conductors when heated, and can thus be used as the material of the furnace.

Meanwhile he continued his endeavours to apply the air thermometer to higher temperatures; the difficulty is to find a suitable container for the gas, and the search led to some interesting results, which were published in a paper with Dr. Kaye on " The Emission of Electricity from Carbon at High Temperatulres," ' Royal Society Proceedings,' 1912.

Previous to this he had investigated -with W. F. Higgins the methods and apparatus used in petroleum testing, and had served as the British delegate to a meeting of the International Commission for the Unificationlof Petroleum Products at Vienna in 1911.

He continued actively engaged in the work of his division until the outbreak of the war---for a time in 1913, on recovery from an illness, he acted as temporary Superintendenit of the Eskdalemuir Observatory--when he was lent to the Inventions Department of the Ministry of Munitions and became Director of Research, being employed mainly in the organization of the work of the Nitrogen Products Committee. The Report of this Committee gives some account of his work.

In this capacity he visited Canada and the United States, and was returning on the Andania when she was torpedoed in 1918 off the Irish coast. His

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Georg Hermann Quincke. xiii

exposure on that occasion-he gave his greatcoat to a companion during some hours in an open boat-undoubtedly weakened his constitution, never very strong.

After the close of the war, on the completion of his work for the Nitrogen Committee, he returned to Teddington for a time, but very shortly started as a consulting engineer with Dr. J. F. Crowley in Westminster.

Pneumonia supervened on a chill taken early in October last, and he died after a verv brief illness.

Dr. Harker married Ada, daughter of Mr. Thos. Richardson, of Alston, and leaves two sons and three daughters.

R. T. G.

GEORG HERMANN QUINCKE, 1834-1924.

GEORG HERMANN QUINCKE was born on the 19th November, 1834, at Frankfort-on-Oder and died on the 13th January, 1924. Having pursued his studies between 1852 and 1858 at K6nigsberg, Heidelberg and Berlin, he began his academic career as privat-docent at the University of Berlin in the year following that of graduation. In 1872 he was appointed to the Professorship of Physics at Wiirzburg, and three years later he succeeded Kirchhoff at Heidelberg.

Quincke's first two papers, of which one dealt with a geological subject, and the other with the lines of electric flow in metallic plates, were published while he was still a student. His doctor dissertation " De constantibus mercurii capillaribus" marks the first of a number of researches on surface tension to which he subsequently devoted a great deal of time and attention. Quincke was primarily an experimentalist, and up to a late period of his life he preferred to confirm or disprove the theories of others without any inclination to form any of his own. In his experiments on capillarity, as in the case of many of his researches, his main object was to determine physical constants, employing all known methods, and often introducing new ones. In the case of surface tension considerable discrepancies were found between the results arrived at by the five different methods used, and Quincke was in some cases successful in tracing the source of the discrepancies. He was perhaps the first to recognize the rapid deterioration of a surface, originally clean, when in contact with the air of a room. To avoid this source of error he introduced his now well- known method of measuring the capillary constant by introducing a bubble of

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xiv Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased.

air into a liquid, the upper surface of the bubble being kept in place by a glass plate covering the liquid. The vertical distance between the lowest point of the bubble and that at which the tangent plane is vertical is a measure of the required constant. But even when the air of the bubble is dust-free and pure, a slow change of the shape of the bubble takes place. This doubtless is due to an alteration of the surface tension resulting from the partial solution of the glass at the surface of the covering plate. Some controversy arose through the insistence by Quincke that the angle of contact between water and glass is not, as a general rule, zero. Even when the liquid wets the surface the film covering the glass gradually deteriorates so that we cease to deal with pure water. This was recognized by Quincke, who pointed out that the angle of contact increases with time. In capillary tubes angles as high as 29 degrees were observed.

In his optical researches, which were numerous, Quincke's predilection for questions involving molecular forces is apparent, for he deals by preference, though by no means exclusively, with surface effects. The difficulty of keeping surfaces clean is again insisted upon and the effects of contamination investigated. As showing some insight into the molecular cause of reflexion and refraction, the following passage is worth quoting*" The reflexion of light has perhaps more similarity with the echo of sound at the boundary of a forest than is generally assumed." Our present theories are capable of dealing with the general problem of reflexion in a much more satisfactory manner than was possible at the time Quincke was occupied with the subject, and his extended investigations on elliptic polarization at reflexion from metallic or transparent bodies are therefore mainly of historical interest. He covered in his experi- mental work the whole range of interference and diffraction, and deserves some credit for pointing out, what even now is generally ignored, that the interference pattern observed by means of Fresnel's mirrors or the bi-prism is sensibly modified by diffraction at the boundary of the beams of light which are brought to interference. In studying the effects of gratings Quincke discovered the spurious spectra, the origin of which at the time was obscure but was subsequently found to be due to the periodicity of the ruling caused by the imperfection of the screw on which the distance between successive grating spaces depends.

Among many devices for measuring physical constants which we owe to Quincke, his methods of determining the magnetic permeability of liquids and the dielectric constants of non-conductors are the most important. If one branch of a U-tube containing a liquid be inserted into a magnetic field while the other lies outside it, a difference in the level of the two surfaces will show itself, the liquid being drawn into the magnetic field if paramagnetic, and out of it if diamagnetic, the observed difference of pressure on the two sides

* 'Pogg. Ann.,' vol. 142, p. 398 (1871).

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Georg Hermann Quinckee. xv

being proportional to the product of the magnetic force and the magnetic induction. A very large number of fluids and dissolved metallic salts were examined in this way. The same method suitably modified was used to deter- mine dielectric constants of liquids. Changes of volume or of pressure due to the internal stresses in a magnetic or electric field were also investigated and applied to the measurement of the magnetic constants of gases.

In one of his earlier researches Quincke examined electric endosmose, a name applied to the transportation of a liquid through a porous diaphragm when an electric current is made to traverse the liquid. He showed that this is a purely electrical process, the porous diaphragm only serving to facilitate the observation, but otherwise playing no part in it. He also demonstrated the converse phenomenon, a difference of electric potential being generated when an electrolyte is forced through a porous body.

During the last twenty-four years of his life, Quincke devoted himself exclusively to the investigation of certain intricate effects of surface tension, to which he attached great importance owing to their application to the formation and properties of living cells in which he firmly believed. As a starting point, he gives evidence for the existence of invisible and generally highly viscous fluid films which often separate the surfaces of separation between two liquids, or of solid and a liquid. These films may explain the periodic formation of precipitates which were first observed by F. F. Runge. Through the action of surface tension they may also be the origin of the formation of foam-like cells. The maovement of protoplasm in the lower animals and plants is explained by the behaviour of white of egg at the surface of oily matter and water. Whatever may be the ultimate verdict on Quincke's views, his numerous, ingeniously planned and carefully executed experiments will always remain a valuable contribution to a complicated and difficult subject.

His last researches, of which two parts were published in 1914 and 1915, deal with the action of the thin liquid films which Quincke supposed to be formed inside glass by electrical action, and which according to him are the first effects of the electric strain, which ultimately lead to the perforation of the glass. Experimental work on this subject was continued almost to the end of Quincke's life, but owing to the cost of printing nothing further was published.

Quincke attended several meetings of the British Association and the Jubilee Celebration of Lord Kelvin at Glasgow. He had many friends in Great Britain, and was the senior Foreign Member of the Royal Society, having been elected in 1879.

A. S.

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