A NOTED ASTRONOMER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 817, 14 May 1910, Page 6

A NOTED ASTRONOMER.

SIR W. HUCCINS DEAD. . HIS SPECTROSCOPIC WORK. By Taloffrapb—Press Association —Copyright London, May 12. Obituary: Sir Wm. Hnggins, astronomer, a ■ specialist in spectroscopic astronomy, and formerly President of tho Royal Society; aged 83. A TALE OF WONDER. THE CHEMIST OF THE STARS. In a. recent review of the "Scientific Papers of Sir William Hnggins" the "Nation" ears:—ln 1856, throe years before Darwin supplied the key in his "Origin of Species" to the ovdution of man from lower life-forms, the Kirchhoff had unlocked the secret 'of the ahomical constitution of the sun, Sir William (then Mr.) Hnggins bnilt a modest observatory: at Tufee Hill which was to become world-famons in the annals of astronomical discovery. For he "builded wiser than he knew." ■ At that time it seemed that the work of the observer of "that inverted bowl, we call the sky" was limited to the conventional lines of his predecessors. At intervals another minor planet would swim "into his ken"; or a new star flash and become extinguished; ox, as recently in the case of Jupiter, another satellite be added to the list of "companions"; or the number of stars whose distances can be reckoned in : light-years increased But that the. mystery of the. stuff'. of which the heavenly bodies are made would be solved was a speculation dismissed well-nigh as soon as broached, for how was it possible to establish any physical relation between the , chemistry i of the earth and that of a mass of matter ninety-three million miles distant! Earth Elements In Sun.' In EtE Wollaston's detection of four dark' lines which crossed a sunray at right angles when broken, on. a prism, lines whioh are now. numbered by' thousands, set the workers in celestial physics on a quest whose result, in the hands of Kirchhoff, was the discovery that sodium, iron, and other terrestrial elements are present in the sun. Thereby Sir William Hnggins, "dissatisfied," he tells us, "with the routine character of ordinary astronomical, work," received the impetus to the application of the spectroscope to analysis of .the light from the so-called "fixed" stars, whereby their chemistry might, perchance be ,also known. His researches, carried' on for some time in conjunction with the late Dr. Allen'Miller (and during many years, to the present time, in still happier collaboration with- Lady Hnggins), began in 1863. In' that year Huxley, pushing Darwin's theory to • its inevitable conclusion, demonstrated the fundamental unity of man, psychically, as well as physically, with every living thing, _ a demonstration which sychronised with the proofs of fundamental unity of sun and stars, and the dependence of the organic on the- inorganic being no matter of question, the inter-relation of aH phenomena was made manifest. It was the birth of the New Anthropology. and the New. Astronomy. Of the triumphs achieved, "transcending . the wildest dreams of an earlier time," by Sir William Hnggins, as, practically, the;founder ' of the science of astrophysics, this majestic volume, and a preceding one entitled "An'. Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra," are alike the witnesses and the Measuring Rate of Motion. •• In 1861 Sir William Huggins's examination of the spectTa of certain nebulae disclosed . the presence of bright lines, throe of which are due to hydrogen. Thus .the. gaseous nature—protoplasm' of sidereal system's-Tof ■ all ■'• true , nebulae (in ,!wh>ch ; -the : imposing.' nebula -in Orion is 'included) wa's'.'demonstrated, and, broadly speaking, the like applies to the vagTant bodies known- as comets. "Sir William applied the spectroscope to the problem of star- measuring the rate at which bodies at inconceivable distances may bo approaching or receding from our system. This was arrived at by calculating the relative displacement of the lines in the spectrum. "Under favourable circumstances," Sir. William says, "the spectroscope enables us to measure to within a mile per second, or even • less, the rate of motion. ''.. . . any small want of coincidence of the. stellar lines with the same, lines pro-duced-upon the earth may safely be interpreted . as revealing the velocity of approach or, of recession between the .star and the;earth." ''.' .' Great Achievements. To-this'Est of great acnSevements (T) the establishment ■ of, the identity of stuff between our system and other stellar systems; (2) of the direction in which the stars are moving; (3) of the nature of many of the nebulae; (1) the revelation of the invisible by the application of photography—enough in themselves to represent the ceaseless labours of a long life—there might be added others, such,, for example, as-the method of viewing the prominences in the uneclipsed 6un; but their secondary importance is warrant for omission from the present attempt to compress in untechnical language the main contents of a volume with- which the expert alone can adequately .deal.

Sir Win. Hanging's/book is a tale>f wonder, the effect of is deepened by the absence of all rhetoric and the presence of modesty in the narration. Dulled must bo the intelligence which fails to .be 'quickened thereby to ponderings over man's stupendous advance in knowledge, ; or to be touched by the-re-flection with what added pathos the final monition, "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther," comes home to the rare truth-seekinff souls typified by the author whose discoveries are the subjectmatter of this volume. ' ■