Obituary notices

Dr. Glaisher died on December 7, 1928, at the age of eighty years. At the time of his death he was the senior of the actual Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, was the senior member of the London Mathematical Society, and was almost the senior in standing among the Fellows of the Royal Society and among the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society. Throughout all his years he was devoted to astronomy, chiefly in its mathematical developments. In his prime he ranked as one of the recognised English pure mathematicians of his generation, pursuing mainly well-established subjects by methods that were uninfluenced by the current developments of analysis then effected in France and in Germany. Towards the end of his life he had attained high station as an authority on pottery, of which he had diligently amassed a famous collection. Glaisher was the elder son of James Glaisher, F. R. S., himself an astronomer, a mathematician specially occupied with the calculation of numerical tables, and a pioneer in meteorology, not without risk to his life. For the father, one of the founders of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, was an aeronaut of note; with Coxwell, in 1862, he made the famous balloon ascent which reached the greatest height (about seven miles) ever recorded by survivors.