During this week the world: has been impoverished by the
death of two great thinkers : Wilhelm von ROntgen, the discoverer of X-rays, and Bernard Bosanquet, who with F. A. Bradley, was perhaps the most representative of the English philosophers of his time. Röntgen was responsible for a considerable amount of minor research work in physics, but his fame is entirely due to his sen- sational discovery of the X-rays. That these rays are of the nature of light but very high up in the ultra- violet end of the spectrum is well known. The discovery was sensational in the sense that perhaps, more than any other hi modern times, it has opened the door, both to further discoveries—such as Mr. Bragg's on the structure of crystals, Moseley's on the periodic table of the elements, and, lastly, Rutherford's attempts, successfully carried out, to break down the coherence of the atom and reveal the ultimate nature of matter— and, on the practical side, to marvellous successes in the treatment of disease and in surgical diagnosis. Dr. Bosanquet was known as an orthodox intellectual of Hegelian descent, and in his Contemporary Philosophy of 1921 he consolidated his position even in face of the very formidable attacks that he and Mr. Bradley had received from the New Realists. He was a prominent member of the Aristotelian Society and a charming, courtly scholar whose death philosophy will have reason to deplore.
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