CHAIR OF PHYSICS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4518, 22 January 1923, Page 3

CHAIR OF PHYSICS.

NEW ZEALANDER APPOINTED. PROFESSOR FLORANCE. For some years past the University of New Zealand has been fortunate in being able .to fill professorial appointments with New Zealand graduates who have gone abroad for experience and further research. The last tihree appointments have been made in this manner, and the Chair of Physics at Victoria College is being filled by the appointment of. Professor David Charles Hamilton Florance, a native of the Dominion, who is ac present holding a similar position, at the University of Hong Kong, which was established in 1912. The post was vacated by the appointment of Professor Marsden as Assistant Director of Education. PROFESSOR’S .CAREER. Details of;. Professor Florance’i career were before the Victoria College when his appointment wa® confirmed, at a salary of £909 per annum. He is a graduate of New Zealand University, haying obtained his M.A. degree, with fiil’sA-class honours in electricity and magnetism, in 1907, and the M.Sc. degree in the following year. In 1908 and 1909 he was demonstrator in physics at Canterbury College, where, in conjunction witi Professor Farr, he carried out Experiments in. radium. In November, 1909, he went .to Victoria University, Manchester, to’continue his, studies in original research under the celebrated authority on radium, Sir Ernest Rutherford. At the request of Professor Farr he returned to New Zealand in 1911, to take his place while he visited England. Professor Farr said that the work he did and the exhe bad gained had certainly made Professor Florance one of the most competent physicists the University of New Zealand had produced. GAINED A COMMISSION. Returning to England, Professor Florance was appointed lecturer and demonstrator of physics in the University of Manchester, where his work was interrupted by the war, in which he gained a commission and served in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North-West India. Demobilised in 1919, he was appointed to his present position as professor of physics at Hong-Kong University, where he has represented, the engineering faculty in the senate of the university. Roth his grandfathers were amongst the early pioneers of New Zealand.

The Vice-Chancellor of, Hong-Kong University pays a high tribute t-.» Professor Florance’s ability and keenness as a lecturer, and says he has shown a remarkable facility for the Chinese language. Sir Ernest Rutherford states that Professor Florance’s original publications in regard to adJum have proved to be of fundamental importance in recent theories of the constitution of the atom. He refers ,tc him as a man of good ability and high l character, with a vigorous physique and pleasing personality. It is expected that Professor Florance will take up his new duties about the middle of March.