100 YEARS AGO

A complimentary dinner was given to Prof. Virchow at the Hôtel Métropole on Wednesday in last week. ⃛ Lord Lister, in proposing the toast of the evening, dwelt upon the versatility of the genius of the distinguished guest, his eminence as a pathologist being equalled by his reputation as an anthropologist and antiquarian. He referred particularly to Virchow's “Cellularpathologie,” which work, he remarked, “swept away the false and barren theory of a structureless blastema, and established the true and fertile doctrine that every morbid structure consists of cells which have been derived from pre-existing cells as a progeny. Cellular pathology is now universally recognised as a truth. Even those morbid structures which deviate most from the normal structure are known to be derived as a progeny from normal tissue — from normal cells, driven to abnormal development by injurious agencies.”

From Nature 13 October 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

“Einstein: His Life and Times.” By Philipp Frank. — Those who, like the present reviewer, are personally unacquainted with Einstein, will read this book with a shock of surprise. While Dr. Frank's sympathies are all with Einstein, the portrait presented to us is not altogether a pleasant one. We see a man developing early into the traditional type of nineteenth-century ‘professor’. He regards himself as free to develop any eccentricity of behaviour, whether those about him like it or not, and to talk shop in season or out of season, a characteristic illustrated by the description of a courtesy visit to a non-mathematical colleague in Berlin, in which, after subjecting his hosts to a forty-minutes discourse on relativity, Einstein left abruptly. This lack of appreciation of the fact that ideas and interests which did not happen to interest him might still be as valuable as those that did may well explain Einstein's difficulties in the Berlin Academy, or his failings as a teacher. Always, apparently, ready to lecture on his researches of the moment or to deliver popular discourses, Einstein was not prepared to teach his students systematically what they had need to learn. — G. C. McVittie

From Nature 16 October 1948.