Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/291

Rh gifts of millionaires. But the people are ready to maintain their universities. Wisconsin has this year appropriated $725,000 for its university; Virginia would in the end do more for its university than will ever be done by distant millionaires. It seems a pity that some of the complications inevitable in an imperfect democracy and the temporary backwardness of the south in appreciation of educational matters as compared with the central and western states have led the University of Virginia to diverge in the direction of our private eastern institutions instead of maintaining intact the democratic ideals of its founder.

retirement of Professor Charles Augustus Young from the active duties of the chair of astronomy and of the directorship of the Halstead Observatory at Princeton deserves more than a passing comment as a news item in this journal. A service of science for a period of more than fifty years in itself commands respectful attention; and the manner in which this service has been rendered, with lofty regard for truth and genuine interest in its diffusion, is almost unique in this generation.

He was to the manor born, for his grandfather, Ebenezer Adams, was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Dartmouth from 1810 to 1833. His father, Ira Young, succeeded Ebenezer in the chair and occupied it with distinction until his death in 1858. Charles Augustus, born at Hanover, on December 15, 1834, was graduated as bachelor of arts from the college of his fathers in 1853. He made his first visit to Europe in that year, accompanying his father, who went to purchase instruments for the Shattuck Observatory then in process of erection at Hanover. The notebooks of the observatory contain many of the son's observations recorded during his undergraduate days. After two years spent in teaching the classics at Phillips' Andover, with simultaneous studies in the theological seminary, Charles Young went in 1857 to Hudson, to become professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Western Reserve College. During several summers he served as astronomical assistant on the government's lake survey. During 1862 he left his books at the call of patriotism, and assumed for some months the captaincy of a regiment of Ohio volunteers, largely composed of students.

He returned to Dartmouth in 1866, to the professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy formerly held by his father. It is fortunate that laboratory instruction was not then included in the teaching of natural philosophy, for otherwise time could hardly have been secured for the researches in astrophysics to which Professor Young's attention was enthusiastically given in the hours not spent in the class room. The significance of the spectroscope was clearly foreseen by him, and he devoted much time to its development.

At the total solar eclipse of 1869, he observed the spectrum of the corona. He looked for, but did not see, the reversal of the dark Fraunhofer lines at the instant of internal tangency of moon and sun. But in the following year, at a station in Spain, his expectations were realized in his detection of the 'flash spectrum.' This difficult visual observation was not photographically confirmed until the eclipse of 1896, when Mr. W. Shackleton, of Sir Norman Lockyer's party, obtained a fairly good plate; and in 1898 Sir Norman and others obtained very fine photographs of the elusive phenomenon.

In the early seventies, Professor Young assiduously observed the solar prominences and the spectrum of the chromosphere. He obtained in 1870 the first photographic record of a solar prominence, but the lack of sensitiveness of the wet-plates then in use made