100 YEARS AGO

By utilising the general ideas of the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, and by applying the equations obtained in the first treatise, [Severenus J. Corrigan] proceeds to investigate the genesis and development of the solar system, to determine the ages and temperatures of the planets, as well as a multitude of other important facts, which, if they could only be demonstrated, would place the author on a pedestal by the side of Newton as the greatest astronomer of the age. The fertility of resource of the author in developing his ideas is astonishing, and though at all times the theories are intended to be primarily based on known experimental data, this basis is in many cases so slight and uncertain, and the assumptions so numerous, that the results must be looked upon as mere speculations. The author is equally at home discussing the cause of the Noachian deluge, the nature of vegetation on the planet Mars, and the cause and origin of X-rays.

From Nature 3 February 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

Versatility is the most delusive of the fairy gifts; the men of genius on whom it was bestowed otherwise than in subtle malevolence can be counted on the fingers. In the age of Euler himself, Johann Heinrich Lambert shone by his own light, not as a reflexion of the great luminary, and had he consented to be only a mathematician, the course of mathematical history would have been different. But condemned by the humiliations of his early life to demand intellectual submission from everyone he met, Lambert could not bear the thought that there were branches of learning of which he was not a master, or stimuli to which his mind did not respond. Asked by the King of Prussia, “What do you know?” he answered, “Everything, sire”; and to the further question, “How did you learn?”, the reply was, “I taught myself”. His contemporaries were duly impressed by the range of his knowledge, and if the solipsistic manner of which we are told suggests that he often knew that he was relying on a bluff which might easily be called, his portrait, which we can study for ourselves, suggests that he thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of carrying off the bluff.

From Nature 7 February 1948.