Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/415

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
D.N.B. 1912–1921

after his death. For Giggleswick School, where he was chairman of the governors for many years, he built and furnished down to the smallest detail, in celebration of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, that remarkable ‘chapel with a dome’ which was the expression both of his lifelong interest in Oriental architecture and of his personal predilections in English history. To go further afield, it is known that he was the mainstay of Lord Roberts's campaign for national service, that for some years he made an annual contribution of £10,000 to King Edward's Hospital Fund, and that innumerable relief funds owed much to his support during both the South African and the European Wars. He was one of the founders of the Palestine Exploration Fund and regarded himself in that connexion as the ‘discoverer’ of Kitchener. By a single gift of £15,000 he made possible the chief Hittite excavations (those of Carchemish) undertaken by the British Museum, while the Society (now dissolved) of Biblical Archaeology owed almost its whole career to his munificence.

Towards the end of his life Oxford became the special object of Morrison's benefactions. Fired perhaps by his experience at Giggleswick, he offered to rebuild the new chapel at Balliol on the lines of the old, which he greatly preferred; and, on the rejection of this somewhat startling proposal, he at once gave £30,000 to the university for the three purposes of a readership in Egyptology, a professorial pension fund, and the study of agriculture. Finally, in 1920, he endowed the Bodleian Library with a single payment of £50,000, and thus took rank among the three chief benefactors in the history of that famous foundation. The honorary degree of D.C.L., which was conferred upon him in the following year, was the only public recognition which he received, or indeed would have valued. He died at Sidmouth 18 December 1921, and was buried at Kirkby Malham.

[Geoffrey Dawson, ‘Walter Morrison’ in the National Review, February 1922.]

G. D.


MOSELEY, HENRY GWYN JEFFREYS (1887–1915), experimental physicist, the only son of Henry Nottidge Moseley [q.v.], Linacre professor of anatomy in the university of Oxford, was born at Weymouth 23 November 1887, and educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Oxford, of which he was a Millard scholar, graduating with honours in natural science in 1910. On both sides he was descended from families of great scientific ability, and he early showed marked originality of mind and interest in science. As an undergraduate he pursued his studies with great determination, with a preference for his own methods; he also rowed every year in one or other of the college boats. Immediately after graduation, he was appointed lecturer in physics in the university of Manchester and began research under the direction of Professor (Sir) E. Rutherford. He soon developed into a rapid and skilful experimenter with unusual powers of continuous work, and showed to a marked degree that combination of practical ability and philosophic insight so necessary for attacking new and difficult problems. Following a number of important investigations in the subject of radio-activity, Moseley began that work on the X-ray spectra of the elements with which his name is inseparably connected. (Sir) W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg had already shown that the wave-length of X-rays could be determined by the crystal method, and had found evidence of bright lines superimposed on the continuous spectrum. Moseley proceeded to examine systematically the relation between the bright-line spectra given by different elements; and found that all the elements gave similar types of spectra, and that the frequency of vibration of corresponding lines was proportional to the square of a number which varied by unity in passing from one element to the next. From these observations, he was able to draw conclusions of far-reaching importance in connexion with the constitution of atoms. He deduced that the nuclear charge of an element, in fundamental units, was equal to its atomic or ordinal number, and varied from 1 in hydrogen to 92 in uranium; he further showed that only three elements were missing between aluminium and gold, and predicted their spectra. His results brought out clearly that the main properties of an element are determined not by its atomic weight but by a whole number defining its nuclear charge. This law of Moseley ranks in importance with the discoveries of the periodic law of the elements and of spectrum analysis, and is in many respects more fundamental than either.

In 1914 Moseley travelled with his mother to Australia to attend the meeting of the British Association. He returned to England in order to enlist at once in the new army, and he obtained his commission as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. He took part in the Gallipoli

389