Prof. Eugene Lagrange

Abstract

EUGENE LAGRANGE, seismologist and emeritus professor of physics at the ficole militaire at Brussels, died in that city on June 15 (Boll. Ital. Soc. Sism., 34, 156; 1936). Born in 1855, he entered the ficole militaire in 1873 and, after passing through its course, was appointed first as assistant professor, and then as professor, of physics, an office that he held until his retirement in 1907. In 1898, he spent some time in Strassburg, in order to become acquainted with the use of seismological instruments. Through the generosity of M. Ernest Solvay, he was enabled to construct a seismological station at the Royal Observatory of Uccle, where he installed three horizontal pendulums of the Rebeur-Ehlert type. His observations there were continued imtil the end of 1903, when M. Solvay presented the station to the Belgian Government. At the same time, two other stations were placed under his direction, one of them at a depth of more than half a mile in a disused passage of a coalmine, the principal object of which was to discover if any relation exists between microseismic movements and the emission of firedamp. From 1908, Prof. Lagrange directed the well-known journal del et Terre, until, in 1910, it was combined with the Bulletin de la Socite beige cTAstronomie.