Dr. Henry Dyer

Abstract

WITH the death of Dr. Henry Dyer on September 25, there passes from our midst, at the age of seventy, one whose name will ever be associated with the rise of Japan as an industrial Power. He had barely finished his distinguished student career in the University of Glasgow when, on the recommendation of Prof. Macquorn Rankine, he was appointed principal of the newly constituted Kobu Daigakko or College of Engineering in Tokyo. This was in 1872, when he was only twenty-four years of age. An account of the college in these early days will be found in NATURE, vol. xvi., p. 44 (May, 1877), and its marked success as an educational institution up to the date of its amalgamation in 1886 with the Teikoku Daigaku or Imperial University of Tokyo was an eloquent tribute to the clearness of purpose and the organising skill of its first principal.