b. September 8, 1836 and d. ?

American physicist. In 1870-’71 he first observed and described the electric shadow; in 1872-’74 he devised a new apparatus for the production of ozone and investigated its action on alcohol and ether, and he determined the polarization of the zodiacal light, measuring its amount and investigating its spectrum. He first discovered gases in stony meteorites, extracted them and determined their composition, obtaining their spectra in vacuum tubes and pointed out their relation to the spectra of comets, thus affording a probable explanation of the latter. In 1877 he discharged electricity in a vacuum and deposited the metal of the electrode upon glass and other surfaces, thus forming brilliant, transparent, metallic films. He devised a barometer and an apparatus for distilling mercury in vacuo, which was adopted by the United States Signal Service.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

—Song of Nature: Emerson

This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,
Those skies, thro’ which it rolls, must all have end.
What then is man? the smallest part of nothing.

—Young’s Revenge

b. September 7, 1829 and d. July 13, 1896

German chemist. By his conception of benzine as a hexamethine he furnishes the direction for one of the most important branches of chemical research. His most important work was his demonstration of the quadruple character of the atoms of carbon. Frankland’s idea of saturation-capacity of elementary atoms was first advanced by him.

For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide undergound her alchemy.

—Woodnotes: Emerson

And know that every atom of the dust,
That mingle with the air, had thought and power,
And pillowed the same hopes on the same fears,
And toiled and struggled in the wanes of woe.

—Westminster Abbey: Sumner L. Fairfield

When the mighty law that governs the sun in his orbit,
And that, concealed in the bud, teaches the point
how to move,
When necessity’s silent law, the steadfast, the changeless,
Stirred up billows more free, e’en in the bosom of man-
When the sense, unerring, and true as the hand of the dial,
Pointed only to truth, only to what was eternal?

—Genius: Schiller

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