Address of the President, Sir Ernest Rutherford, O. M., at the anniversary meeting, December 1, 1930

At this, our Annual Meeting, we are naturally conscious of the severe losses in our ranks in the course of the year. We have to deplore the removal by death of some of the best known and most valued Fellows, including Lord Balfour and Sir William McCormick, elected under Statute 12, Professor Le Bel, Foreign Member, and twelve Fellows of the Society. The death of the Earl of Balfour at the age of 82 removed from our midst a public figure of the first magnitude. Although Balfour's activities covered a wide field, and although a great part of his career he carried heavy responsibilities in guiding the affairs of the Nation, science was always with him a topic of primary interest. If he cannot be said to have made original contributions to scientific knowledge himself, there can be no doubt that his championship of the cause of science was of the greatest indirect benefit. As First Lord of the Treasury in 1900, he did much to help forward the scheme for the National Physical Laboratory, in which his brother-in-Law, Lord Rayleigh was interesting himself. He was constantly called upon to preside, or to speak, at meetings for the furtherance of scientific objects, or the commemoration of the great scientific careers of the past, and seldom failed to add distinction to such occasions. He may indeed be regarded as a chief interpreter of science to the English public during his generation. He was President of the British Association at Cambridge in 1904. He was elected to the Royal Society under Statute 12, as early as 1888, at the age of 40 years. He served on the Council in 1907-08 and again in 1912-14. But, perhaps, his chief work for science was the Minister responsible for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and for the Medical Research Council. Of the latter body he acted as chairman until the onset of his illness. He watched the scientific interests under these departments with close personal attention, and did much to establish them on a permanent basis. Finally, to him was due the Committee of Civil Research, complementary to his order creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence. He was Chancellor of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and President of the British Academy. His is a place which will not easily be filled.