George Barger, 1878 - 1939

Abstract

Early in January 1939, George Barger, apparently in full health, left home to pay a short visit to friends in Switzerland, and to give a few lectures in the University of Basel. On 6 January came the news of his sudden death from heart failure, at Aeschi, on the Lake of Thun. His early death, not long after his sixtieth birthday, entails a heavy loss to science and to academic life in this country, and a deep personal loss to his many friends here; but there are many men of science in other countries also, who will mourn the loss of a valued friend and colleague, whose wide experience and friendly contacts, with men of so many nationalities and languages, have meant much for the promotion and maintenance of international fellowship in science. Barger was born in Manchester in 1878; I have known him, indeed, to be proudly insistent on his status as a British subject by birth. His parentage, however, was bi-national, his father Gerrit Barger being a Dutch engineer who had settled for a time in Manchester and married an English wife.