by a committee of which Professor Ames was the responsible member, and the Dublin University Press has published the 'Scientific Writings' of FitzGerald, edited by Dr. Joseph Larmor. These memorial volumes should be in the hands of many who are not physicists by profession. It is true that some of the papers contain mathematical formulas and technical statements not comprehensible to those without special training. But each volume also includes a number of masterly addresses revealing the progress of physical science, and the researches give an excellent introduction to the fundamental concepts of modern physics. They show science in the making in a way that is in many respects more attractive than a systematic treatise.
Rowland was by common consent the leading experimental physicist of his generation in this country. In one of his addresses he could only mention four American physicists of note—| Franklin, Rumford, Henry and Mayer. Fundamental as the work of Franklin and Rumford proved to be in the history of science, it was in a way amateur in character, incidental to more absorbing activities; and Rumford's work can scarcely be credited to America. Henry's investigations were also fundamental, but they were in large measure fragmentary and unpublished. Mayer's ingenious experiments can scarcely be regarded as of great importance. Rowland may thus be regarded as the greatest experimental physicist that America has produced. He himself attributed our lack of productivity in pure physics to the counter attraction of invention and money-making; and in one of his addresses spoke very bitterly of the university professor who prostituted his chair to such uses. It is, however, not clear why a group of able inventors and experts should not lead to pure science as well as away from it. Rowland himself patented important inventions, as his application of alternating currents to rapid telegraphy, and acted as expert for engineering enterprises, as the electrical development at Niagara Falls.
Rowland's researches fall into three main groups—magnetism and electricity, heat and light—and in each
