Popular Science Monthly/Volume 36/March 1890/Obituary Notes
Prof. Chester S. Lyman, of Yale University, died in New Haven, Conn., January 29th, aged seventy-six years. A sketch of his life and works, and a portrait, were published in "The Popular Science Monthly" for November, 1887.
M. Cosson, member of the French Academy of Sciences, and author of several memoirs on the flora of Algeria and Tunis, died in Paris on the last day of the year 1889. He was President of the Botanical Society of France and Archivist of the Socicté d'Acclimation.
Dr. William Ramsay McNab, Professor of Botany in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, recently died, suddenly, of heart disease. He was born in Edinburgh in 1844, his father, as his grandfather had been, being Curator of the Botanic Garden there. He studied at Edinburgh, where he was also assistant to Prof. Balfour, and at Berlin, practiced medicine for three years, after which, in 1870, he entered upon a biological career. He introduced important reforms in the method of teaching botany, chiefly by adopting the method of Sachs; was author of numerous works or papers relating to botany and fossil plants; was a practical student of geology; and collected coleoptera. He was appointed in 1888 Swiney Lecturer to the British Museum of Natural Sciences, and was at the time of his death about to begin a third course on fossil botany.
Prof. Lorenzo Respighi, Director of the Osservatorio Campidoglio, Rome, one of the most eminent scientific men in Italy, died December 10th.
The people of Manchester interested in the subject have decided to erect in that city a memorial of James Prescott Joule, which shall take the form of a white marble statue, and also to set up a replica in bronze in some public place in the city. An international monument to James Watt is proposed, to be erected at Greenock, his birthplace, and to take the form of a large and thoroughly equipped technical school.
Senhor José Augusto de Sereza, curator of the zoölogical department of the museum at Lisbon, Portugal, who has recently died, was the author of some useful memoirs on African birds, and of museum catalogues of certain orders.
Edouard Phillipps, an eminent French mechanician and engineer, died December 14th, in his seventieth year. He left important works on mechanics and metallurgy, and his "Lectures" on hydraulics and hydrostatics, published in 1875, was highly appreciated. lie was made a member of the Academy of Sciences, in the Section of Mechanics, in 1868.
Among the recent foreign deaths is that of the Italian physicist Govi, whose name is closely associated with matters relating to the history of science, particularly in his own country. He prepared an interesting group for the International Electrical Exposition of 1881 of instruments which had been used by Galvani, Volta, and Nobili.
Julien Sacaze, a young epigraphist and archaeologist of great repute in the provincial districts of France, has recently died. He discovered a considerable number of prehistoric monuments and sites in and near the Pyrenæan departments, co-operated in the foundation of the Pyrenæan Association and of a more local society at Comminges, and with Dr. F. Garrigo established the "Revue des Pyrénées et de la France Méridionale." The collections which he made in the course of his investigations are described as having been "superb." He left the manuscript of a work on the "Epigraphy of the Pyrenees," which will be published.
Vice-Admiral Cloué, who died in Paris on the 25th of December, was best known for the marine charts he constructed and for his exertions to make of practical value the property of oil in stilling the waves. When he entered the service the French marine was dependent on English or Dutch charts. He substituted for these French charts, many of which he prepared. He was born in 1817 and spent his life in the French naval service or positions connected with it, was appointed Governor of Martinique in 1872, and afterward held the position of Minister of the Marine and the Colonies. He was a member of the Bureau of Longitudes, of the Observatory and the Meteorological Council, and had been elected to a seat in the Institute.
Mr. E. J. Jones, since 1883 an officer of the Geological Survey of India, who died October 15th, aged thirty years, was an associate of the Royal School of Mines and a chemist from the schools of Zürich and Wurzburg. He contributed several geological and chemical papers to the publications of the Survey.
Mr. John Tavernier Bartram, who died recently at Stake's Point, Bermuda, in his seventy-ninth year, was held in high esteem among scientific men as a naturalist. During the forty-two years that he resided at Stoke's Point, says "The Bermuda Colonist," he made a collection of birds, fishes, shells, and other natural curiosities, that has long since come to be "one of the things to be seen in Bermuda"; and for the past twenty-five years no scientific man who visited Bermuda and could get to Stoke's Point ever failed to pay him a visit. He contributed articles to the local press on the natural history and geology of Bermuda, and prepared hand-books on the cage-birds and the shells of the island.