In a supplementary circular, issued in April, 1893, it was stated that any branch of natural science may furnish subjects of discussion for the Hodgkins prizes, provided the subjects are related to the study of the atmosphere in connection with the welfare of men: "Thus, the anthropologist may consider the history of man as affected by climate through the atmosphere; the geologist may study in this special connection the crust of the earth, whose constituents and whose form are largely modified by atmospheric influences; the botanist, the atmospheric relations of the life of the plant; the electrician, atmospheric electricity; the mathematician and physicist, problems of aërodynamics in their utilitarian application; and so on through the circle of the natural sciences, both biological and physical, of which there is perhaps not one which is necessarily excluded.
"In explanation of the donor's wishes, which the institution desires scrupulously to observe, it may be added that Mr. Hodgkins illustrated the catholicity of his plan by citing the experiments of Franklin in atmospheric electricity and the work of the late Paul Bert upon the relations of the atmosphere to life as subjects of research which, in his own view, might be properly considered in this relationship."
Eight thousand copies of these circulars were sent to institutions and investigators throughout the world, and applications for grants soon reached the Secretary of the Smithsonian.
In 1893 two grants were made: one of five hundred dollars to Dr. O. Lummer and Dr. E. Pringsheim, of the Physical Institute, Berlin University, for researches on the determination of an exact measure of the cooling of gases while expanding; and a second grant of one thousand dollars to Dr. J. S. Billings, United States Army, and Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, for investigations into the nature of the peculiar substances of organic origin contained in the air expired by human beings, with specific reference to the ventilation of inhabited rooms.
Mr. Thomas George Hodgkins died November 25, 1892, at the advanced age of nearly ninety years; being, next to Smithson, the most generous benefactor of the institution. A brief sketch of his life is appropriate. He was born in England in 1803, of highly respectable ancestry; his early education was in France, where he acquired language, habits, and manners influencing all his later life. At the age of seventeen, led by a youth's love of adventure, and seeking relief from domestic unhappiness, he shipped before the mast on a trading vessel bound for Calcutta. The vessel was wrecked near the mouth of the Hoogly and the young man found himself penniless, friendless, and ill in a hospital in Calcutta. While in this sad plight, he made up his mind, so he said, to acquire a fortune and to devote it to philanthropic
