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It is well known that the past quarter of a century has been one of extraordinary advances in the sciences of heat, light, electricity and magnetism. It is less well known, however, that this period has been one of extraordinary losses by death of the eminent mathematical physicists who have contributed to those advances.

Maxwell, Kirchhoff, Hertz, Helmholtz, Fitzgerald, Rowland, Stokes, and now Gibbs, have all fallen since 1879. Only two of those leaders, Helmholtz and Stokes, passed the proverbial three score and ten years; Kirchhoff and Gibbs attained only a little more than sixty years; while the others, as if to