Fowler, Prof. Alfred, (22 March 1868–24 June 1940), Past-President Royal Astronomical Society; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, and of the Instituto de Coimbra, Portugal; For. Assoc. Nat. Acad. Sci., USA; Yarrow Research Professor of the Royal Society, 1923–34; Emeritus Professor of Astro-Physics, Imperial College, South Kensington; late Member of Advisory Council Department of Scientific and Industrial Research

1901 ◽  
Vol 67 (435-441) ◽  
pp. 370-385 ◽  

This expedition was one of those organised by the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, funds being provided from a grant made by the Government Grant Committee. The following were the principal objects which I had in view in arranging the expedition:— To obtain a long series of photographs of the chromosphere and flash spectrum, including regions of the sun’s surface in mid-latitudes, and near one of the poles.


It is my pleasant duty to welcome you all most warmly to this meeting, which is one of the many events stimulated by the advisory committee of the William and Mary Trust on Science and Technology and Medicine, under the Chairmanship of Sir Arnold Burgen, the immediate past Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society. This is a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the British Academy, whose President, Sir Randolph Quirk, will be Chairman this afternoon, and it covers Science and Civilization under William and Mary, presumably with the intention that the Society would cover Science if the Academy would cover Civilization. The meeting has been organized by Professor Rupert Hall, a Fellow of the Academy and also well known to the Society, who is now Emeritus Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Imperial College in the University of London; and Mr Norman Robinson, who retired in 1988 as Librarian to the Royal Society after 40 years service to the Society.


1925 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 151-152

My Lord Chancellor, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Campbell, Ladies and Gentlemen: It would be an impertinence on my part to try to add anything to the Cambridge welcome which the Chancellor has offered you, but it is my privilege to be allowed to offer you a few words of welcome from a somewhat different angle. As the Chancellor has said, it is my good fortune to be officially connected with the two learned societies to whom, I suppose, your visit to this country means most: the Royal Society, which takes all natural knowledge for its province, and which is especially interested in international co-operation in the pursuit of such knowledge, and the Royal Astronomical Society, which takes astronomical knowledge for its special care. I am sure that both these bodies would wish that I should seize this opportunity to offer a most cordial welcome to our astronomical visitors from other countries; a welcome not only to Cambridge, but to this country in general. We feel it right that your visit should begin at Cambridge, but we are sure it is not right that it should end there; we hope you will remember that, after Cambridge, London also exists.


The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D. S. I. R.) was established in 1916 and, in June 1917, the Cold Storage and Ice Association sent a deputation to the Department’s Advisory Council, stating that thousands of tons of food were lost annually by decay before they could be marketed, and urging the national importance of research by Government on the preservation of foodstuffs. The Council agreed to consider the matter, and in October a report was prepared and presented by the late Sir William Hardy (then Mr W. B. Hardy, Secretary of the Royal Society and Secretary of the Society’s Food (War) Committee), and three other Fellows of the Society, the late Professors W. M. Bayliss, J. B. Farmer and Gowland Hopkins. A Research Director and a Research Board were recommended and appointed, the terms of reference of the Board being ‘To organize and control research into the preparation and preservation of foods’. The decision thus taken implied that the work to be done was considered to belong broadly to the class of national researches better conducted by the State than by industry with Government assistance. Hardy was the first Director and the members of the Board were Sir Kenneth Anderson, Sir Walter Fletcher, Sir Richard Threlfall, Professor T. B. Wood, Sir Thomas MacKenzie (High Commissioner for New Zealand) and Sir Joseph Broodbank (Chairman of the Port of London Authority). The Board became known as the Food Investigation Board—or the ‘F. I. B.’. The word ‘investigation’ rather than ‘research’ was used to avoid confusion with the Fuel Research Board—F. R. B.—which had been set up in the previous year. £5000 was allocated for the expenses of the first half-year, and the Board presented its first report in November 1918.


Dr. Glaisher died on December 7, 1928, at the age of eighty years. At the time of his death he was the senior of the actual Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, was the senior member of the London Mathematical Society, and was almost the senior in standing among the Fellows of the Royal Society and among the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society. Throughout all his years he was devoted to astronomy, chiefly in its mathematical developments. In his prime he ranked as one of the recognised English pure mathematicians of his generation, pursuing mainly well-established subjects by methods that were uninfluenced by the current developments of analysis then effected in France and in Germany. Towards the end of his life he had attained high station as an authority on pottery, of which he had diligently amassed a famous collection. Glaisher was the elder son of James Glaisher, F. R. S., himself an astronomer, a mathematician specially occupied with the calculation of numerical tables, and a pioneer in meteorology, not without risk to his life. For the father, one of the founders of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, was an aeronaut of note; with Coxwell, in 1862, he made the famous balloon ascent which reached the greatest height (about seven miles) ever recorded by survivors.


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