John Tyndall (b.  Leighlin Bridge, Co.  Carlow, 1820, d. 1893), F.R.S., professor at the Royal Institution and a fellow-worker in many ways with Huxley, especially on the subject of glaciers.  He wrote also on heat as a mode of motion and was the author of many scientific papers, but will, perhaps, be best remembered as the author of a Presidential Address to the British Association in Belfast (1874), which was the highwater mark of the mid-Victorian materialism at its most triumphant moment.

CHEMISTS.

Richard Kirwan (b.  Galway 1733, d. 1812), F.R.S.  A man of independent means, he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and mineralogy and was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society.  He published works on mineralogy and on the analysis of mineral waters, and was the first in Ireland to publish analyses of soils for agricultural purposes, a research which laid the foundation of scientific agriculture in Great Britain and Ireland.

Maxwell Simpson (b.  Armagh 1815, d. 1902), F.R.S., held the chair of chemistry in Queen’s College, Cork, for twenty years and published a number of papers in connection with his subject and especially with the behavior of cyanides, with the study of which compounds his name is most associated.

Cornelius O’Sullivan (b.  Brandon, 1841, d. 1897), F.R.S., was for many years chemist to the great firm of Bass & Co., brewers at Burton-on-Trent, and in that capacity became one of the leading exponents of the chemistry of fermentation in the world.

James Emerson Reynolds (b.  Dublin 1844), F.R.S., professor of chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin, for many years, discovered the primary thiocarbamide and a number of other chemical substances, including a new class of colloids and several groups of organic and other compounds of the element silicon.

Among others only the names of the following can be mentioned:—­Sir Robert Kane (b.  Dublin 1809, d. 1890), professor of chemistry in Dublin and founder and first director of the Museum of Industry, now the National Museum.  He was president of Queen’s College, Cork, as was William K. Sullivan (b.  Cork 1822, d. 1890), formerly professor of chemistry in the Catholic University.  Sir William O’Shaughnessy Brooke, F.R.S. (b.  Limerick 1809, d. 1889), professor of chemistry and assay master in Calcutta, is better known as the introducer of the telegraphic system into India and its first superintendent.

BIOLOGISTS.

William Henry Harvey (b.  Limerick 1814, d. 1866), F.R.S., was a botanist of very great distinction.  During a lengthy residence in South Africa, he made a careful study of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope and published The Genera of South African Plants.  After this he was made keeper of the Herbarium, Trinity College, Dublin, but, obtaining leave of absence, travelled in North and South America, exploring the coast from Halifax to the Keys of Florida, in order to collect materials for his great work, Nereis Boreali-Americana, published by the Smithsonian Institution.  Subsequently he visited Ceylon, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Friendly and Fiji Islands, collecting algae.  The results were published in his Phycologia Australis.  At the time of his death he was engaged on his Flora Capensis, and was generally considered the first authority on algae in the world.