Prof. Carl Runge

Abstract

MANY of those who attended the meeting of Section A of the British Association at Oxford last August, distinguished as it was by the presence of so many spectroscopists and atomic theorists from various countries, will remember the peculiar pleasure, and one might say affection, roused by a really beautiful speech from that veteran mathematical spectroscopist, Prof. Runge; in which he expressed gratification at the brilliant results which were pouring forth on all sides as the outcome of earlier work in which he and some German colleagues had taken a leading part. In the peroration of that speech he pronounced on himself a touching Nunc Dimittis, which, alas, only five months later has been justified, though, as we learn from the obituary notice in NATURE of April 9, p. 533, he had attained only seventy-one years of age.