Obituary notices of fellows deceased

Abstract

Gabriel Lippmann was born near Luxemburg, his father being a native of Lorraine and his mother an Alsatian. He received his early education at home, and when his parents settled in Paris, entered the "Lycée Napoléon" at the age of thirteen. Ten years later he was admitted to the Ecole Normale. Lippmann's pronounced individuality, which appeared so strongly, both in the subjects he selected for research and in his method of attacking problems, showed itself at an early age; but the boy, absorbed in his own thoughts and irresponsive to outside influence, was not marked out for a successful school career. Concentrating on what interested him, neglecting what did not appeal to his taste, he acquired an invaluable fund of useful but unremunerative knowledge, with the result that he failed in the examination of "agrégation," which would have qualified him for Government service as a teacher in one of the higher schools. His exceptional abilities could not, however, fail to impress the more discriminative of his masters, and while still in statu pupillari Bertin induced him to collaborate in the publication of the "Annales de Chimie et de Physique" by abstracting German papers. It was in this way that he first became acquainted with contemporary researches on electricity, a subject which was not then taught at the Sorbonne. He is reported to have drawn Ruhmkroff's attention to the desirability of synchronizing the periods of the primary and secondary windings of an induction coil, but the "business man," as frequently happens, was not amenable to the advice of an academic novice.