LONDON

BECKER

"NATURE" says:

"The new illustrated catalogue of physical apparatus just issued by Messrs. F. E. Becker and Co. (Messrs. W. and J. George, Ltd.) is likely to prove indispensable in the physical laboratories of all our schools and colleges. It runs to 628 large pages, and is strongly bound in cloth. Full particulars only are provided, not respecting the apparatus required in elementary and advanced physical teaching, but also concerning that necessary to the physicist in his research work. All branches of physics are included, and the instruments throughout are explained by excellent illustrations and concise descriptions, and, what is of prime importance, the figure and its appropriate text are close together."

"CHEMICAL NEWS" says:

"Messrs. F. E. Becker and Co. (W. and J. George, Ltd., successors) have just issued a new Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of Physical Apparatus, &c., manufactured by them. This is the largest and best English catalogue of its kind printed, and comprises some 630 pages and over 4,000 illustrations; herein will be found all the newest up to date apparatus with all the latest improvements as manufactured at their works, while all obsolete apparatus has been omitted. The whole catalogue is arranged in a very clear manner under a number of principal headings, such as Magnetism, Heat, Sound, Light, Mechanics, Electricity, Pneumatics, Meteorology, X-ray Appar atus, &c., and a good index is provided; in fact, everything possible has been done to make this as perfect a guide as possible to users of apparatus in the subjects touched upon.”

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KNOWLEDGE" says:

'Messrs. F. E. Becker and Co. (W. and J. George, Ltd., Successors) have sent us a copy of their new list of apparatus in the various departments of Physics, including Sound, Light, Heat, Magnetism, Electricity, Mechanics, &c. This exhaustive catalogue consists of over 600 pages and some 4000 illustrations. One of its noteworthy features is that the requirements of science teaching in this country and its colonies are always kept in view, and the articles listed cover the latest developments in their subjects. The method adopted in the list itself, together with the completeness of the index, is such as to make reference to it simple and expeditious."

"SCHOOL WORLD" says:

"The science-master in every grade of school should possess a copy of the new catalogue of Messrs. George, for he will find here particulars as to the available apparatus in sound, light, heat, magnetism, electricity. mechanics, and other branches of physics, with information as to price and other necessary details. There is a profusion of welldrawn illustrations, which, together with the clearly expressed descriptions, will serve to explain to any buyer exactly what he is purchasing. This excellent catalogue will form a valuable addition to the reference library of any physical laboratory."

LONDON

of the phenomena of nature by direct observation and experiment, an integral and essential part of all education in this country.

I proceed to the award of the medals.

Copley Medal.

The Copley Medal is awarded to Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., for his experimental researches in chemistry and physics, extending over more than fifty years. Ever since his discovery of the element thallium in the early days of spectrum analysis, he has been in the front rank as regards the refined application of that weapon of research in chemical investigation. Later, the discrepancies which he found in an attempt to improve weighings, by conducting the operation in high vacua, were tracked out by him to a repulsion arising from radiation, which was ultimately ascribed by theory to the action of the residual gas. This phenomenon, illustrated by the radiometer, opened up a new and fascinating chapter in the dynamical theory of rarefied gases, which the genius of Maxwell, O. Reynolds, and others, has left still incomplete. The improvements in vacua embodied in the Crookes tube led him to a detailed and brilliant experimental analysis of the phenomena of the electric discharge across exhausted spaces; in this, backed by the authority of Stokes, he adduced long ago powerful cumulative evidence that the now familiar kathode rays, previously described by C. F. Varley, must consist of projected streams of some kind of material substance. His simple but minutely careful experiments on the progress of the ultimate falling off in the viscosity of rarefied gases, from the predicted constant value of Maxwell, at very high exhaustions, gave, in Stokes's hands, an exact account of the trend of this theoretically interesting phenomenon, which had already been approached in the investigations of Kundt and Warburg, using Maxwell's original method of vibrating discs.

These examples, not to mention recent work with radium, convey an idea of the acute observation, experimental skill, and persistent effort, which have enabled Sir William Crookes to enrich physical science in many departments.

Rumford Medal.

The Rumford Medal is awarded to Prof. Ernest Rutherford, F.R.S., on account of his researches on the properties of radio-active matter, in particular for his capital discovery of the active gaseous emanations emitted by such matter, and his detailed investigation of their transformations. The idea of radiations producing ionisation, of the type originally discovered by Rontgen, and the idea of electrified particles, like the kathode rays of vacuum tubes, projected from radioactive bodies, had gradually become familiar through the work of a succession of recent investigators, when Rutherford's announcement of a very active substance, diffusing like a gas with a definite atomic mass, emitted by compound of thorium, opened up yet another avenue of research with reference to these remarkable bodies. The precise interpretation of the new phenomena, so promptly perceived by Rutherford, was quickly verified, for radium and other substances, by various observers, and is now universally accepted. The modes of degradation, and the enormous concomitant radio-activity, of these emanations, have been investigated mainly by Rutherford himself, with results embodied in his treatise on radio-activity and his recent Bakerian lecture on the same subject. It perhaps still remains a task for the future to verify or revise the details of these remarkable transformations of material substances, resulting apparently in the appearance of chemical elements not before present; but, however that may issue, by the detection and description of radio-active emanations and their transformations, Prof. Rutherford has added an unexpected domain of transcendent theoretical interest to physical science.

Royal Medal.

A Royal Medal is awarded to Prof. W. Burnside, F.R.S., on the ground of the number, originality, and importance of his contributions to mathematical science. The section of our "Catalogue of Scientific Papers" for the period 18831900 enumerates fifty-three papers by Prof. Burnside, the first dated 1885, and the "International Catalogue of Scientific Literature" thirteen more. His mathematical work

has consisted largely of papers on the theory of groups, to which he has made most valuable additions. In 1897 he published a volume "On the Theory of Groups of Finite Order," which is a standard authority on that subject. Two recent papers on the same theory, published in 1903, may be specially mentioned. In one of these he succeeded in establishing by direct methods, distinguished by great conciseness of treatment, the important subsidiary theory of groupcharacteristics, which had been originally arrived at by very indirect and lengthy processes. In the other he proved quite shortly the important result that all groups of which the order is the product of powers of two primes are soluble. Besides the treatise and papers relating to group theory, Prof. Burnside has published work on various branches of pure and applied mathematics. His work on automorphic functions dealt with an important and difficult special case which was not included in the theory of these functions as previously worked out. The paper on Green's function for a system of non-intersecting spheres was perhaps the first work by any writer in which the notions of automorphic functions and of the theory of groups were applied to a physical problem. He has also made important contributions to the theory of functions, non-Euclidean geometry, and the theory of waves on liquids. His work is distinguished by great acuteness and power, as well as by unusual elegance and most admirable brevity.

Royal Medal.

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The other Roval Medal is awarded to Colonel David Bruce, F.R.S., who, since 1884, has been engaged in prosecuting to a successful issue researches into the causation of a number of important diseases affecting man and animals. When he went to Malta in 1884 the exact nature of the widely prevalent "Malta,' Rock,' or Mediterranean fever was entirely unknown. After some years' work at the etiology of this disease, he discovered in 1887 the organism causing it, and succeeded in cultivating the Micrococcus melitensis outside the body. This discovery has been confirmed by many other workers, and is one of great importance from all points of view, and perhaps more especially as, thanks to it, Malta fever can now be separated from other diseases, e.g. typhoid, remittent, and malarious fevers, with which it had hitherto been confounded.

During the next few years he was engaged in researches of value on cholera, and on methods of immunisation against this disease. He also carried out some work on the leucocytes in the blood, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1894.

In 1894 he was requested by the Governor of Natal to investigate the supposed distinct diseases of "nagana and the tsetse-fly disease. In the short time of two months he made the most important discovery that these two diseases were one and the same, and dependent upon the presence of a protozoan organism in the blood, known as a trypanosome. Some six months later Bruce was enabled to return to Zululand, and remained there two years, studying the disease and making the discovery that the tsetse fly acted as the carrier of the organism which caused it. He was thus the first to show that an insect might carry a protozoan parasite that was pathogenic. This observation was made in 1895.

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Bruce not only determined the nature and course of nagana," but in addition he studied the disease in a large number of domestic animals, and also observed the malady in a latent form in the wild animals of South Africa. Subsequent observers have found but little to add to Bruce's work on this subject.

In 1900 Bruce was ordered to join a commission investigating the outbreak of dysentery in the Army in South Africa, and a great part of the laboratory work performed by this commission was carried out by him.

In 1903 Colonel Bruce went, at the request of the Royal Society, to Uganda, to investigate further the nature of sleeping sickness. It was very largely, if not entirely, owing to him that the work of the Royal Society's commission was brought to a successful issue. At the time when he arrived a trypanosome had been observed by Castellani in a small number of cases of this disease; thanks to Bruce's energy and scientific insight, these observations were rapidly extended, and the most conclusive evidence obtained, that in all cases of the disease the trypanosome

was present. He showed further that a certain tsetse fly, the Glossina palpalis, acted as the carrier of the trypanosome, and obtained evidence showing that the distribution of the disease and of the fly were strikingly similar.

Bruce has therefore been instrumental in discovering and establishing the exact nature and cause of three widespread diseases of man and of animals, and in two of these, nagana and Malta fever, he discovered the causal organism. In the third, sleeping sickness, he was not the first to see the organism, but he was quick to grasp and work out the discovery, and he made the interesting discovery of the carrier of the pathogenic organism, and thus discovered the mode of infection and of spread of the malady, matters of the highest importance as regards all measures directed to arrest the spreading of the disease.

All this research work has been done whilst serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and engaged in the routine work of the Service.

Davy Medal.

The Davy Medal is awarded to Prof. W. H. Perkin, jun., F.R.S., for his masterly and fruitful researches in the domain of synthetic organic chemistry, on which he has been continuously engaged during the past twenty-five years.

Dr. Perkin's name is identified with the great advances which have been made during the past quarter of a century in our knowledge of the ring or cyclic compounds of carbon. Thus, in the year 1880, the cyclic carbon compounds known to chemists were chiefly restricted to the unsaturated groupings of six carbon atoms met with in benzene and its derivatives, whilst the number of compounds in which saturated carbon rings had been recognised was very limited, and it was indeed considered very doubtful whether compounds containing carbon rings with more or less than six atoms of carbon were capable of existence.

The starting point for Dr. Perkin's researches in this field of inquiry was his investigation of the behaviour of the di-halogen derivatives of various organic radicals with the sodium compounds of malonic, aceto-acetic, and benzoylacetic esters, which led to the synthesis of the cyclic polymethylene compounds up to those of hexamethylene, whilst heptamethylene derivatives were obtained by an adaptation of the well known reduction of ketonic bodies leading to pinacones. The reactions thus introduced by Perkin are now classical, having proved themselves of the highest importance for synthetical purposes, and having been instrumental in stimulating the further investigation of the cyclic compounds of carbon.

Dr. Perkin also extended the same methods to the synthetical formation of carbon rings of the aromatic series, obtaining by means of ingeniously designed reactions derivatives of hydrindonaphthene and tetrahydronaphthalene.

But whilst the above achievements depend mainly on happily conceived and brilliantly executed extensions of the malonic and aceto-acetic ester syntheses, Perkin has, by a remarkable development of the Frankland and Duppa reaction for the synthesis of hydroxyacids, been successful in building up the important camphoronic acid in such a manner as to place its constitution beyond doubt (1897).

Dr. Perkin has further devoted much attention to the important subject of the constitution of camphor, towards the elucidation of which he has contributed valuable experimental evidence embodied in a most important and elaborate paper, containing the results of many years' work in conjunction with numerous pupils, entitled " Sulphocamphylic Acid and Isolauronolic Acid, with Remarks on the Constitution of Camphor and Some of its Derivatives (1898). Bearing on the same subject are later communications on camphoric acid and isocamphoronic acid.

About the year 1900, Perkin, in prosecuting his researches on the constitution of camphor compounds, succeeded in devising synthetical methods for the production of what he has termed " bridged rings," of which a simple example is furnished by the hydrocarbon dicyclopentane

The universal admiration of organic chemists has been called forth by these investigations; they reveal, indeed, a wonderful capacity for devising reactions which coerce carbon atoms to fall into the desired groupings.

Of other publications displaying not only extraordinary experimental skill but close reasoning and the power of interpreting results, mention may be made of Dr. Perkin's memorable researches on the constitution of dehydracetic acid, berberine, brasilin, and hæmatoxylin respectively.

During the present year (1904), Dr. Perkin has made perhaps the most remarkable addition to the long list of his achievements by successfully synthesising terpin, inactive terpineol, and dipentene, substances which had previously engaged the attention of some of the greatest masters of organic chemistry.

In conclusion it may be stated that Prof. Perkin is not only the author of the above and numerous other important researches which are outside the scope of this brief sum mary, but that he has also created a school of research in organic chemistry, which stands in the very highest rank.

Darwin Medal.

The Darwin Medal is awarded to Mr. William Bateson, F.R.S., for his researches on heredity and variation.

Mr. Bateson began his scientific career as a morphologist, and distinguished himself by researches on the structure and development of Balanoglossus, which have had a farreaching influence on morphological science, and which established to the satisfaction of most anatomists the affinity of the Enteropneusta to the Chordate phylum. Dissatisfied, however, with the methods of morphological research as a means of advancing the study of evolution, he set himself resolutely to the task of finding a new method of attacking the species problem. Recognising the fact that variation was the basis upon which the theory of evolution rested, he turned his attention to the study of that subject, and entered upon a series of researches which culminated in the publication in 1894 of his well-known work, entitled "Materials for the Study of Variation, &c." This book broke new ground. Not only was it the first systematic work which had been published on variation, and, with the exception of Darwin's Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," the only extensive work dealing with it; but it was the first serious attempt to establish the importance of the principle of discontinuity in variation in its fundamental bearing upon the problem of evolution, a principle which he constantly and successfully urged when the weight of authority was against it. In this work he collected and systematised a great number of examples of discontinuous variation, and by his broad and masterly handling of them he paved the way for those remarkable advances in the study of heredity which have taken place in the last few years, and to which he has himself so largely contributed. He was the first in this country to recognise the importance of the work of Mendel, which, published in 1864, and for a long time completely overlooked by naturalists, contained a clue to the labyrinth of facts which had resulted from the labours of his predecessors. He has brought these results prominently forward in England in his important reports to the Evolution Committee of the Royal Society, and in papers before the Royal and other societies. and also before horticulturists and breeders of animals. He has gathered about him a distinguished body of workers, and has devoted himself with great energy and with all his available resources to following out lines of work similar to those of Mendel. The result has been the supporting of Mendel's conclusions and the bringing to light of a much wider range of facts in general harmony with them. It is not too much to say that Mr. Bateson has developed a school of research to which many biologists are now looking as the source from which the next great advance in our knowledge of organic evolution will come.

Sylvester Medal.

The Sylvester Medal is awarded to Georg Cantor, pro fessor in the University of Halle, on account of his researches in pure mathematics. His work shows originality of the highest order, and is of the most far-reaching importance. He has not only created a new field of mathematical investigation, but his ideas, in their application to analysis, and in some measure to geometry, furnish a weapon of the utmost power and precision for dealing with the foundations of mathematics, and for formulating the necessary limitations to which many results of mathematics are subject.

In 1870 he succeeded in solving a question which was then attracting much attention the question of the uniqueness of the representation of a function by Fourier's series. The extension of the result to cases in which the convergence of the series fails, at an infinite number of suitably distributed points, led him to construct a theory of irrational numbers, which has since become classical. From the same starting point he developed, in a series of masterly memoirs, an entirely new branch of mathematics-the theory of sets of points.

Having established the fundamental distinction between those aggregates which can be counted and those which cannot, Cantor showed that the aggregates of all rational numbers and of all algebraic numbers belong to the former class, and that the arithmetic continuum belongs to the latter class, and further, that the continuum of any number of dimensions can be represented point for point by the linear continuum. Proceeding with these researches he introduced and developed his theory of "transfinite" ordinal and cardinal numbers, thus creating an arithmetic of the infinite. His later abstract theory of the order-types of aggregates, in connection with which he has given a purely ordinal theory of the arithmetic continuum, has opened up a field of research of the greatest interest and importance. Hughes Medal.

The Hughes Medal is awarded to Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S., for his invention of the incandescent electric lamp, and his other inventions and improvements in the practical applications of electricity. Not as directly included in the award, his inventions in dry-plate photography, which have so much increased our powers of experimental investigation.

NOTES.

THE Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at its recent meeting decided to award Sir James Dewar, F.R.S., the Gunning Victoria Jubilee prize for 1900-4 for his researches on the liquefaction of gases extending over the last quarter of a century, and on the chemical and physical properties of substances at low temperatures.

THE Times reports that a telegram by wireless telegraphy has been transmitted by Mr. Marconi from the Marconi Company's station at Poldhu, Cornwall, to a station belonging to the Italian Government at Ancona, Italy. The distance between Poldhu and Ancona, about 1000 miles, is almost entirely overland, and in order to reach their destinat on the ether waves had to pass over nearly the whole of France and a considerable part of Italy, including some of the highest mountains of the Alps.

THE will of the late Dr. Frank McClean, F.R.S., includes the following bequests :-5000l. to the University of Cambridge to be expended in improving the instrumental equipment of the Newall Observatory, 5000l. to the University of Birmingham (in addition to his previous subscription) to be applied in the department of physical science, 2000, to the Royal Society, 2000l. to the Royal Institution, 2000l. to the Royal Astronomical Society, and to the University of Cambridge for presentation to the Fitzwilliam Museum all the testator's illuminated or other manuscripts and early printed books, and all objects of mediæval or early art which the director of the museum may select as being of permanent interest to the museum.

In a recent letter to the Times Prof. T. Clifford Allbutt directs attention to the paramount importance of considering the question of diet in all schemes of physical education. It is important that there should be no hasty legislation in this matter, especially in view of the important researches which are now approaching completion. Prof. Allbutt gives in his letter a brief account of the results at which Prof. Arwater, of Middletown, Connecticut, and Prof. Chittenden, of Yale University, have arrived. Prof. Atwater has

measured accurately, upon healthy persons in uniform circumstances, the intake of food, and the output of waste and work, and has endeavoured to determine the modes and rates of conversion of foods into bodily and mental energy. Much of this expenditure of energy is upon an excess of food taken beyond the needs of the individual. Such excess (or not more than 4 per cent. of it) does not escape mechanically and cheaply from the body, but is absorbed, distributed, and excreted; to this process no little energy is diverted. In this useless effort energy is chiefly wasted by the nitrogenous foods. Excessive starches and sugars are burned off in the lungs almost directly, and at far less cost. Prof. Atwater teaches that the ordinary man eats too much, and in so doing wastes energy which he might have used to profit. Prof. Chittenden comes to a like conclusion by somewhat different methods. He will publish shortly tables to show how, on a closer adjustment of kinds and quantities of food to the useful work required, not only is this much work still sustained, but, by release of energy ordinarily dissipated in the demolition of food excess, the sum of work put out is prodigiously increased, in some cases even by so much as 60 per cent. or 70 per cent. It is clear enough already that one of the chief factors of physical well-being is to know what to eat, and what quantity of it results in the production of the maximum of useful energy. Until this is known with more exactitude than is common to-day, systems of physical education must be tentative and imperfectly conceived.

PROF. S. NEWCOMв has been elected corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

PROF. FEHR Contributes to l'Enseignement mathématique for November 15 a list of the principal exhibits of models and books at the mathematical congress last August. Among the publishing firms exhibiting books, Germany was represented by six, Austria by two, France by four, Italy by five, Switzerland, Belgium and Denmark each by one. This is exclusive of books exhibited by societies and individuals, under which category we find the solitary British exhibit, by the Royal Irish Academy. Among the exhibitors of models our country was represented by Prof. Greenhill.

THE Belgian Government has decided upon the construction of a turbine steamer for its Channel fleet. Gradually the 19-knot steamers on this international service will be replaced by new turbine boats, with a speed of 23 knots, so that eventually even the slowest mail boats under the Belgian flag will have a speed of 21 knots, or 24 miles an hour. The steamer which will inaugurate this departure in the progress of the service is at the present moment on the stocks at Hoboken, near Antwerp, and it will shortly be launched. Until quite recently, all steamships in the Channel and Irish Sea services were of the paddle-wheel type, a class admirably adapted for these comparatively short journeys. Drawing little water, they were able to enter any of the shallow harbours, and, at the same time, were capable of developing a speed altogether out of proportion to their draught. Since the introduction of turbines the diminution of the diameter of the propeller and of the weight of the engines has been rendered possible, so that what was until lately considered a mechanical impossibility, namely, to construct a steamer drawing only 9 feet and developing 12,000 indicated horse-power, may now be taken as a problem solved. The new Dover-Ostend mail boat will be a triple-screw steamer driven by Parsons' marine steam turbines. There will be three turbines a highpressure one in the centre, receiving the steam direct from the boilers, and a low-pressure one on each side, driven by