The British Association at Bournemouth: Section B. Chemistry: Opening Address

Abstract

IN again taking up the work of this section, after an interval of three years, a discontinuity without parallel in the annals of the association, it is natural that our thoughts should turn to the past, and in so doing we are reminded of the gaps in the ranks of those why were accustomed to contribute to the work of our section. In 1916 we met under a shadow caused by the death of Sir W. Ramsay, whose genius added in so many ways to our science. And to-day we have to record the loss of one who in his long life contributed in a variety of ways to the advancement of chemistry, and to whom we owe an addition to the number of elementary substances in the discovery of thallium, one of the early fruits of the use of the spectroscope. The chemistry of the rare earths has been especially illumined by the researches of Sir William Cropkes. With physicists we would join in a tribute to the memory of Lord Rayleigh, amongst whose experimental researches is one of special interest to chemists, namely, the revelation of the existence of argon, of which discovery Sir J. J. Thomson has recently written that it was not made “by a happy accident, or by the application of new and more powerful methods than those at the disposal of his predecessors, but by that of the oldest of chemical methods: the use of the balance.”