Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 60.djvu/328

Rh He also devised an extremely delioate method (based on the interference of light) of determining the coefficients of thermal expansion of small bodies, such as crystals. The instrument he designed has been carefully studied by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, with very satisfactory results.

On account of these and other researches, M. Fizeau has, for nearly half a century, occupied a conspicuous position among European physicists. He was awarded the Romford Medal in 1866, and became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 18/o.

Our distinguished Foreign Member, Professor Hubert Anson Newton, Senior Professor of Mathematics at the Yale University, New Haven, died at his home in New Haven on the 12th of August last. He was born at Sherbourne, in the State of New York, in 1830 ; studied at Yale College, where he graduated in 1850, and was called to the Chair of Mathematics in the University at the early age of twenty-five.

On the organisation of the Observatory of the University in 1882, Professor Newton was appointed Director; and though he resigned this position in 1884, the whole policy and success of the Observatory ever since, and, indeed, its very existence, are in no small measure due to his warm interest and untiring efforts.

Professor Newton’s name will ever remain associated with his important researches on Meteor Astronomy, beginning as early as 1860, and with his inquiry into the possible capture of comets by Jupiter and other planets. His historical investigations, and discussions of the original accounts, showed that the phenomena of meteor showers are of a permanent character, and come within the range of Celestial Dynamics, and that predictions of returning meteoric displays are possible.

Professor Newton was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1885, and was for many years an Associate Editor of the ‘ American Journal of Science.’ He was a man of noble character, held in universal esteem, and greatly beloved by all those to whom he was personally known.

The death of August Kekule will be felt as a severe loss to chemical science all over the world. Not only did his great activity in original research enrich organic chemistry with many new and interesting compounds, but his announcement of the tetradie valency of carbon, and, especially, his theoretical conception of the benzene ring, gave an impulse to the study of structural chemistry which has introduced order into the vast array of organic compounds, both of the alcoholic and aromatic types, and has not, even yret, expended itself. In recognition of his life-long work, the Council of the Royal Society awarded Professor Kekule the Copley Medal in 1885.

Another Foreign Member who has passed away from us during