Popular Science Monthly/Volume 40/March 1892/Obituary Notes

OBITUARY NOTES.

Our French papers bring news, with no particulars, of the death, January 12th, of M. A. de Quatrefages, the eminent anthropologist, at the age of eighty-two years.

M. Jean Servais Stas, the distinguished Belgian chemist, died at Saint-Gilles, near Brussels, December 13th, after a short illness. He was born at Lou vain in 1813, studied in Paris under Dumas, and, returning to Belgium, became a professor in the Military School. He was afterward Commissioner of Moneys, a member of the Commission of the Observatory, and, after the death of Houzeau, of the Committee of Direction, Belgian representative in the International Committee of Weights and Measures, member of many learned societies at home and abroad, and bearer of many honors. His chemical researches were numerous, and have been much quoted from.

Dr. H. K. H. Hoffmann, Professor of Botany at Giessen, and Director of the Botanic Institute there, died October 27th, in the seventy-third year of his age.

Edouard Mailly, formerly aid at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, died October 8th, in his eighty-second year. He entered the Observatory as a computer in 1832, and occupied himself there with the reductions of the meridional observations. He published in the Annuaire of the Observatory, and in the Academical Collections, a number of works in the history of science which were highly prized. Among them were essays on the Scientific Institutions of Great Britain and Ireland, Spain, Italy, and the United States, a sketch of Astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere and in India, papers on the history of the Belgian Academy, biographical notices of Adolphe and Ernest Quetelet, Van Ries, and Argelander, and a book of reminiscences.

The Right Rev. Harvey Goodwin, Bishop of Carlisle, who died in York, England, November 25th, took a prominent part in the discussion of questions involving the interrelations of science and religion. Being an eminent mathematician, as well as a distinguished theologian, he enforced his arguments with mathematical methods and principles, which added greatly to their effect. He was clear, judicious, and temperate in argument, and rarely missed the essential point. The papers by him which have been published in the Monthly attest his ability in this particular.

Prof. Joseph Lovering, Hollis Professor Emeritus of Harvard College, died January 18th of heart-failure following grip, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. A full sketch of his life and scientific activity till his retirement from work in 1888 was published in the Monthly for September, 1889.