Popular Science Monthly/Volume 42/March 1893/Obituary Notes

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OBITUARY NOTES.

The death is announced of John Obadiah Westwood, President of the British Entomological Society. He was born in 1805, at Sheffield, and was appointed a Professor of Zoology at Oxford in 1861. He received a royal medal from the Royal Society for his scientific work in 1855, and was elected a member of the Entomological Society in Paris, to succeed Humboldt, in 1860. He was author of an introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects, British Butterflies and their Transformations, and other works of a similar nature.

F. von Hellwald, a well-known Austrian writer on ethnography, died in Bavaria, November 1, 1892, in the fiftieth year of his age. He entered the army, but left it in 1864 to engage in scientific studies, then re-entered it and took part in the Austro-Prussian War. He was for several years editor of Das Ausland. Since 1882 he had devoted himself chiefly to the production of works relating to geography and the history of civilization.

James Plant, of Leicester, a distinguished English local geologist, died in November, 1892, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He was chairman of the British Association's Committee on Erratic Blocks.

Prof. E. N. Horsford, of Harvard University, died in Cambridge, Mass., January 1st. After four years of service as teacher of mathematics and natural sciences in Albany Female Academy, he spent two years of study and research in the Liebig Laboratory at Giessen. Returning home, he became Rumford Professor of Science applied to the Arts. He afterward submitted plans which led to the foundation of the Lawrence Scientific School, where he spent nineteen years. He then whent into business in the manufacture of chemicals, and became President of the Rumford Chemical Works. He published a paper more than thirty years ago on stilling the waves with oil. He was interested in archæology; published a lexicon of five Indian languages; and tried to determine the location of the ancient settlement of Norumbega on Charles River, Mass.

Amedée Guillemin, one of the most successful and eminent French popularizers of science, died early in January, at his native village of Pierre, France. He was born in 1826, and began the publication of his celebrated works in physics and astronomy in 1864, with La Ciel (the sky). This was followed by similar works on comets, etc., The Physical World, the Petit encydopédie populaire, in sixteen volumes, the books on Steam and Railroads in the Library of Wonders, etc. He was a frequent contributor to La Nature.