University College School Research Articles

Alfred Gibbs Bourne, 1859 - 1940

Sir Alfred Gibbs Bourne died on 14 July at Dartmouth after a life of great distinction first as a zoologist, later in the broader fields of education in India. He was elected a Fellow in 1895. He was born at Lowestoft, 8 August 1859, and was the son of the Rev. Alfred Bourne, who was the well-known secretary of the British and Foreign School Society, and the compiler of The Fourfold Portrait of the Heavenly King, by Interpreter, as he signed himself. After a hberal home education he entered University College School, where he, like his school contemporary Sydney J. Hickson, was fascinated by the visits and lectures of Ray Lankester. This influence was extended when he entered University College in 1876. In this same year he also attended the Royal School of Mines, but was rather bewildered by Huxley, then in the zenith of his powers. Lankester was attracted by Bourne’s extraordinary inventiveness, which he at once began to apply to morphological research. He used to describe how Bourne made everything he required. Indeed he greatly improved not only the equipment of the laboratory but also that of his master. In particular he made a series of micro-dissection instruments of different grades, the finest almost the forerunner of that of Chambers, working on the same principle. Almost daily he visited the lily ponds in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Regent’s Park, and he developed the tanks in the laboratory, while a small pond in the grounds of the college was infected with all the suitable forms of life he could collect.

Prof. Leonard S. Dudgeon, C.M.G., C.B.E

PROF. LEONARD S. DUDGEON, who died on October 22, aged sixty-two years, was educated at University College School, London, and entered St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School in 1894. After qualifying, he decided to devote himself to pathology, and was appointed clinical pathologist to St. Thomas's Hospital in 1903. Here he gained an extensive knowledge of morbid histology under the late S. G. Shattock, with whom he collaborated in several investigations, and whom he succeeded as lecturer in pathology to the Medical School.

Prof. Karl Pearson, F.R.S.

WITH Prof. Karl Pearson, who died suddenly on April 27, has passed one of the great figures of the last half-century in science. He was born in 1857, son of William Pearson, K.C., of sturdy Yorkshire stock. Educated first at University College School, he entered King's College, Cambridge, as a scholar in 1875, and took his B.A. (Mathematical Tripos, 3rd Wrangler) in 1879; he was elected a fellow of the college in the following year, and remained a fellow until 1886. In 1882 he was called to the Bar in the Inner Temple, and originally intended to make the law his profession. But Sir Alexander Kennedy persuaded him to give up law and, to use his own expression, “finally landed me in Clifford's chair of Applied Mathematics at University College”—the Goldsmid professorship of applied mathematics and mechanics in the University of London. This was in 1884. He was the spiritual, not the direct, successor to Clifford, who had died in 1879; the post had in the meantime been held by Prof. Henrici.

Sir John Rose Bradford, Bart., K.C.M.G., C.B., C.B.E., F.R.S

THE death of Sir John Rose Bradford, on April 7, after some months of increasing disability, will be deeply regretted in many scientific circles. Born in London on May 7, 1863, as the son of Abraham Rose Bradford, a naval surgeon, he was educated at University College School, University College, and University College Hospital, London, and had a brilliant career as a student, published physiological papers before he became qualified medically, and was specially interested in biology. His papers, however, were mainly physiological, and covered a wide field: on the electrical phenomena associated with secretion; on the innervation of the blood vessels; and particularly on the renal function, which he later extended to the subject of uraemia and disease. He probably hesitated about his life's work, whether strictly scientific work or medicine, for he was elected George Henry Lewes student in physiology in 1888, his predecessors being C. S. Roy (1879), L. C. Wooldridge (1882), and C. S. Sherrington (1884), and his immediate successors G. N. Stewart and E. H. Hankin jointly (1889). The decision was made when he accepted accelerated appointment as assistant physician to University College Hospital. His physiological researches gained him the fellowship in 1894 of the Royal Society, of which he was later secretary (1908-15). He thus, like his teacher, Sydney Ringer, combined the attitude of an all-round biologist with that of a practising physician.

Arthur Prince Chattock, 1860 - 1934

Arthur Prince Chattock died at his home in Clifton, Bristol, on July 1, 1934. He was born on August 14, 1860, at Solihull, Warwickshire, a county with which his family had been identified for many generations. He was the eldest of a family of seven, one of his brothers being R. A. Chattock, M.Sc., President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1925. His schooldays were spent in London at University College School. As a boy he showed an early interest in anything mechanical. Greatly stimulated by such events as the Christmas lectures of the Royal Institution, he made his own electrical apparatus and repeated experiments he had seen. He also wrote plays, erected a stage with drop scenes and gas footlights and made all the dresses for family theatricals. At seventeen he went abroad for two years to Dunkerque and Stuttgart mainly to study languages. At this age he was imbued with the idea of taking up electrical engineering for monetary reasons, but in the hope that sooner or later he would be in a position to abandon it and devote his life to the study of the fundamental phenomena of electricity in the future importance of which he had profound faith.

SAMUEL GEE 1839-1911

Samuel Gee (1839 to 1911), a Londoner, studied at Enfield as a boy and also at University College School. His medical education was obtained at the University of London, and after a number of years spent in the practice of surgery, he was elected an assistant physician at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. He was later elected to the same position at St. Bartholomew's, where he eventually became a full physician and lectured in medicine until his retirement in 1904, when he was made a consultant and a governor. In 1901, he was appointed physician to the Prince of Wales, now George V. Gee wrote a book on auscultation and percussion which went through six editions, and in 1876, he wrote Medical Lectures and Aphorisms. He also contributed pioneer articles on head-shaking and head-banging, both of which appeared in theSt. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports. In 1888, in

David Miller Muir, M.A., D.M.R.E.

David Miller Muir, M.A., D.M.R.E.Published Online:29 May 2014https://doi.org/10.1259/0007-1285-6-72-765SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail AboutAbstractDavid Miller Muir, of Exeter, was the eldest son of the late David Temple Muir of Ealing, and was born in 1888. He was educated at University College School. Later he went up to Cambridge, to Trinity College. He worked chiefly in the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir J. J. Thomson, showing promise as a physicist even among the brilliant company gathered around the Cavendish Professor. After taking honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, Miller Muir went to St. Bartholomew's Hospital to complete his qualification in medicine and worked on his special subjects under Mr. E. P. Cumberbatch. Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 6, Issue 72December 1933Pages: 705-768 © The British Institute of Radiology History Published onlineMay 29,2014 Metrics Download PDF

Guthrie and the Physical Society

ON October 15 occurs the centenary of the birth of Frederick Guthrie, through whose initiative the Physical Society of London was founded. Born in Bayswater, London, Guthrie was the son of a Bond Street tailor, and as a boy had as tutor the chemist Henry Watts (1815-1884), to whom no doubt he owed his early devotion to science. He was sent to University College School, and afterwards entered University College, where Watts was an assistant professor, and studied chemistry under Graham and Williamson, and mathematics under De Morgan. From London, at the age of twenty-one, he went to Germany, working under Bunsen at Heidelberg and under Kolbe at Marburg. On his return to England he was successively assistant to Frankland at Owens College and to Lyon Playfair at Edinburgh. In 1861 he was appointed professor of chemistry and physics at the Royal College, Mauritius, where he had as his colleague Walter Besant, the novelist. In 1869 he became professor of physics at the Normal College of Science, South Kensington, and this post he held until his death.

Dr. Ernest Clarke

ERNEST CLARKE was a well-known London eye-specialist. Born in Hampstead on July 21,1857, he died on November 22, 1932. His career is well described in the medical journals of December 3. Educated at University College School, he joined St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School in 1876. He began his career in 1880, as a general practitioner at Blackheath but soon turned to ophthalmic work and moved to Chandos Street, W. He was very successful, through making the correction of small errors of refraction his special care.

Sir Alfred Fernandez Yarrow, 1842-1932

Alfred Fernandez Yarrow was born in London in 1842, and at a very early age gave evidence of the attraction which engineering held for him. So much was this the case that when quite a boy his schoolmaster said that he undoubtedly had talent for mechanics. At thirteen, he was sent to University College School, and when between fifteen and sixteen years of age he was apprenticed to Ravenhill Salkeld and Co., Marine Engine Builders, where he went through the usual thorough training of that time. But in addition to his regular work it is recorded that he spent his leisure hours in study and work in his own workshop. During this period he made friends with a boy named James Hilditch, who also had a strong mechanical bent. Between them they developed a number of original inventions and they took out several patents, including some relating to ploughing machinery which proved very successful. The actual ploughing machinery was made by Coleman and Sons, of Chelmsford, and young Yarrow soon became London representative of the firm. About this time, Hilditch and Yarrow made a notable contribution to practical telegraphy by installing the first overhead telegraph line in London between their two homes. These two young men had certainly a very wide range of interests, and not only worked at their special inventions, but they explored keenly the possibilities of the use of steam for road traction, and in 1861 their proposals were taken up by the late T. W. Cowan, at Greenwich.

Sir Philip Magnus, Bt

THE many friends of that veteran educationist, Sir Philip Magnus, Bt., will be interested to learn that on Oct. 7 he celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of his birth. Sir Philip attended University College School, London (possibly he is now the oldest of its scholars), graduating afterwards at the University of London. He was secretary of the City and Guilds of London Institute from 1880 until 1888, and within this period was a member of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction. Afterwards, for some thirty years, he was superintendent of the Department of Technology, City and Guilds of London Institute. Long devoted to the interests of the Royal Society of Arts, Sir Philip was elected its chairman of council in November 1927, succeeding Sir Thomas Holland. An inaugural and most comprehensive address delivered in that capacity was entitled, “The Royal Society of Arts: its Services to Trade and Training”.

Sir Alfred Yarrow, BT., F.R.S

WE much regret to announce the death, which occurred on Jan. 24, of Sir Alfred Fernandez Yarrow, the veteran marine engineer and shipbuilder. The son of a clerk in the employ of a West India merchant in the City of London, Sir Alfred Yarrow was born on Jan. 13, 1842. Evincing from his earliest years great natural ability, Yarrow attended first a small private school, and then at the age of thirteen years entered University College School, where he had Joseph Chamberlain as a schoolfellow. At the age of fifteen and a half years he was apprenticed to Miller, Ravenhill, and Salkeld, an eminent firm of marine engineers on the Thames, which had been founded by Joseph Miller in 1822 and had gained a high reputation as makers of machinery for mercantile vessels and for warships. One of the contracts completed by the firm during Yarrow's apprenticeship was the machinery for the cross-Channel steamer s.s. Leinster, one of four very notable craft running between Holyhead and Dublin, having a speed of eighteen knots.

Dr. Alex Hill

DR. ALEX HILL, whose death was recently re corded in NATURE, was born at Loughton, Essex, and educated at University College School and at Downing College, Cambridge; in 1880 he was elected a fellow of the College, from 1888 to 1907 he was Master of Downing, and from 1897 to 1899 Vice-Chancellor of the University. He studied medicine and surgery at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; in 1884-85 he was Hunterian professor of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Mr. W. W. Rouse Ball

WALTER WILLIAM ROUSE BALL was born in London on August 14, 1850, and was educated at University College School and afterwards at Uni versity College. He was primarily a mathematician, but his studies were not confined to one subject, for besides gaming the gold medal for mathematics in the M.A. examination of the University of London, he ob tained a first-class in mental and moral science in the final honours examination for the B.A. degree in 1869. He commenced residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1870 and graduated as second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1874. He was called to the bar, and although he did not practise, he published a “Student's Guide to the Bar,” which ran through many editions. He was elected a fellow of Trinity College in 1875, anc' was a mathematical lecturer at the College from 1878 until 1905. He also held the post of tutor from 1893 until 1905, an office for which he was admirably qualified by his methodical habits, his sense of justice, and his wide sympathies.

Dr. Talfourd Ely

DR. TALFOURD ELY, whose death was recently announced at the age of eighty-six, was a nephew of Frank Ely, the dramatist, and great-nephew of Sir T. N. Talfourd, author of “Ion.” During the greater part of his life he was closely connected with University School and College, London. He was vice-principal and classical tutor at University Hall, classical master at University College School, and secretary of the College. This last post he resigned in order to study archaeology at Berlin, where he worked with Ernest Curtius, Kirchof, Robert, Furtwangler, and Waltenbach, and became acquainted with other leading scholars. He travelled largely in Europe, and had an exciting adventure at Olympia with brigands whom he routed. In his later years he was connected with many learned societies-the Antiquaries, Hellenic, Royal Archaeological, and others. The literary works by which he will be best known are “A Manual of Archaeology” and “Roman Hayling,” embodying the results of his own excavations at Hayling Island, besides many papers on archaeology.

Obituary

COL. CHARLES EDWARD CASSAL, who died on December 22 last, in his sixty-fourth year, was public analyst for the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea, the Royal Borough of Kensington, the Parts of Holland and Kesteven (Lines), and Chipping Wycombe (Bucks), and joint public analyst for the City of Westminster. He was educated at University College School, and received his professional training at University College, London, where he was demonstrator in the department of hygiene and public health from 1879 to 1888. He was a fluent and forcible speaker, and, having qualified, by examination, for the fellowship of the Institute of Chemistry, he took a prominent part in the discussions relating to the interests of his profession, particularly those of public analysts and official agricultural analysts. Col. Cassal served on the council for six periods of three years each, and as a censor for one year. He frequently accompanied deputations from the institute to Government departments. For fifteen years he was editor of the British Food Journal, to which, as well as to other journals, he contributed many articles on the chemistry of food and drugs, on water supplies, and on sewage treatment and disposal.

Alexander Muirhead, F.R.S

ALEXANDER MUIRHEAD, F.R.S, who died at Shortlands, Kent, on December 13, 1920, was born in East Lothian in 1848. His father, John Muirhead, abandoned farming and was attracted to London in the early days of cable telegraphy, starting a business in, Regency Street, Westminster, in partnership with Mr. Latimer Clark, Young Alexander, who was afflicted with partial deafness all his life, the result of a childish accident, went to University College School, Gower Street, and then to the college, where he made rapid progress in chemistry and mathematics, and became a devoted pupil pi De Morgan. He afterwards worked at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, under Mathiessen, in whose laboratory, amongst other things, he worked put the problem of the Latimer Clark standard, cell, and laid the foundation of life-long accurate work in connection with electrical standards. He took the D.Sc. in 1872, in electricity, and become scientific adviser to his father's firm, where John Perry and many another later distinguished man took advantage of the opportunities, then novel, for accurate and absolute electrical measurement.

The Library World Volume 22 Issue 9

“Hitherto,” remarked the Provost, Sir Gregory Foster, at the University College School of Librarianship Social on March 3rd, “The librarian has been in an unfortunate position. He was thought to know so much that it was unnecessary to teach him anything, and when he had been persuaded to become a librarian, it was thought to be unnecessary to pay him anything.” Allowing for a certain telling and colouring irony, this does really represent the position of some librarians in the past; and the hope that Sir Gregory Foster then expressed, which was echoed by Sir John MacAlister, that the new School would play its part in altering the position, is one that all librarians, however ruefully, must share. Ruefully, because the School was not established twenty or more years ago, so that they might have enjoyed its advantages, and have been prepared, in an orthodox academic sense, for the great days which are undoubtedly ahead for libraries and librarians.

Obituary notices of fellows deceased

Prof. Ayrton was born in London on September 14, 1847, and he died November 8, 1908. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1881, and he was awarded a Royal Medal in 1901. He was the son of an able barrister, Edward Nugent Ayrton, and the nephew of the Right Hon. Acton Ayrton, who was a member of Mr. Gladstone’s Government from 1869 to 1874. He belonged to a family which for three hundred years had been represented by lawyers, musicians, surgeons, clergymen, university dons, and schoolmasters. He distinguished himself at University College School, and later at the College; he gained the Andrews Exhibition in 1865, and the Andrews Scholarship in 1866. In 1867 he passed with honours the first B. A. examination in the University of London; in the same year he came out first in the examination for the Indian Government Telegraph Service, and in preparation for India he became a pupil of Lord Kelvin in Glasgow. In India, after acting as assistant to Mr. Schwendler, he succeeded him as Electrical Superintendent of the Telegraph Department; these two men revolutionised the Indian telegraph system. In 1872-73 he was on special duty in England, and assisted Lord Kelvin and Prof. Jenkin, the engineers for the Great Western Telegraph Cable. From 1873 to 1878 he was Professor of Natural Philosophy and Instructor in Telegraphy in the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokio, Japan. From 1879 to 1884 he was Professor of Applied Physics at the City and Guilds Technical College, Finsbury, and at the same time he had much practice as an engineer. From 1884 till he died he was Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at the City Guilds Central Technical College, Kensington. An active member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers almost from the beginning, a diligent member of Council and of the Committees of the Council, he became President in 1892. He was President of the Physical Society of London in 1890 and 1891, and President of Section A of the British Association in 1898. He served on Juries at various exhibitions, and as a member of various Congresses dealing with international electrical questions.

The New Institute of Physiology at University College, London

BY the completion of the Physiological Institute at University College, London, which has been erected within the past twelve months upon the site of the playground of University College School, the University of London possesses what is probably the finest laboratory of its kind in the country, and one which is perfectly equipped both for teaching all branches of physiology and for the pursuit of original research work. The erection of this. institute marks an epoch, not only in the history of the re-constituted University of London, but in the development and advancement of the British school of physiology, a school which was practically non-existent a few decades ago, when nearly all research in this subject was carried out in the laboratories of France and Germany.