Abstract
IN connexion with the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, on November 30, when the medals for the year were presented (NATURE, Nov. 10, p. 727) it may be recalled that this gathering one hundred years ago took place on December 1, in consequence of St. Andrew's Day falling upon a Sunday. The treasurer, Sir John William Lubbock, occupied the chair, the reason for this arising from a letter that he had received that day from H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex, president of the Society, stating that the condition of his eyesight forbade attendance. “I regret,” the Duke wrote, “being deprived of the pleasure of conferring the medals this day, and particularly the one which has been so properly adjudged to you, for whom I profess the highest consideration.” The customary anniversary address was not delivered. The Copley medal was allotted to Giovanni Antonio Plana, professor of astronomy and director of the observatory of the University of Turin, for his work entitled, “Theorie du Mouvement de la Lune” (3 vols. 4to., 1832). Elected a foreign member of the Society in 1827, Prof. Plana died at Turin in 1864. The recipients of the Royal medals were (1) John W. Lubbock for his investigations on the tides, and (2) Charles Lyell for his work, “Principles of Geology”. The grounds for the latter award were announced as: (a) the comprehensive view taken of the subject, and its philosophical spirit and dignity; (b) the important service rendered to science by specially directing the attention of geologists to effects produced by existing causes; (c) the author's admirable descriptions of many tertiary deposits; (d) the new mode of investigating tertiary deposits, which his labours have greatly contributed to introduce, namely, that of determining the relative proportions of extinct and still existing species, with the view of discovering the relative ages of distant and unconnected deposits. The Rumford medal was awarded to Prof. Macedonio Melloni, of Parma, for his researches and experiments on the diffusion of heat by radiation, and its relationship in lunar light. Melloni was director of the Meteorological Observatory, Mount Vesuvius, 1839-49, and became a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1839; he died in 1853.
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Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society. Nature 134, 841 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134841b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134841b0