CHAPTER XII
DIGNITIES AND HONOURS—THE DEUTSCHE REVUE—GERMANY AND ENGLAND—WORLD SUPREMACY OR WAR
Roscoe’s services to science and to the cause of education were widely recognized. He was an honorary graduate of many universities at home and abroad, and an honorary or corresponding member of many foreign scientific societies. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford; and LL.D. of Cambridge (1883), Dublin (1878), Glasgow (1901), and Montreal (1884); and D.Sc. of Aberdeen, Liverpool, and Victoria. On the occasion of the eighth jubilee of the foundation of Heidelberg University he was made an honorary M.D.
He served as a member of the jury for chemical products of the English section of the French Exhibition of 1878, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honour, and in 1889 a corresponding member of the French Institute of the Academy of Sciences. He was an honorary member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia and of the New York Academy of Sciences; of the Chemical Society of Berlin; of the Bunsen Gesellschaft, of the Verein für Naturwissenschaft of Brunswick, and of the Physikalische Verein of Frankfort; a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences of Munich, of the Royal Society of Sciences of Göttingen, of the Royal Accad. Lincei of Rome, and of the Academy of Natural Science of Catania; a member of the Leop. Carol. Akad. of Halle, and of the Physiogr. Sällsk of Lund. He was an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, and of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. In 1912 the Franklin Institute awarded him the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal.
He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1909—an honour which he accepted not only as a personal distinction but as a recognition of the claims of Science.
But of all the distinctions and marks of appreciation he received in the course of his long and busy life, none afforded him a truer or more heart-felt gratification than the action taken by his old pupils in celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the date—March 25, 1854—on which he took his Heidelberg degree. The warmth and cordiality with which the idea of commemorating his jubilee was received, not only by his former students but by every teaching institution, academic body, and scientific society with which he was or had been connected, was a striking testimony to the regard and esteem in which he was universally held. The University of Heidelberg renewed its diploma of Doctor Philosophiæ Naturalis, and accompanied it by an address from the Grand Duke of Baden, Rector of the University, the Pro-Rector, Senior Dean, and the other professors of the Philosophical Faculty. Addresses were also sent by University College, London, the Victoria University, and the Universities of London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wales, Scotland, Montreal, Melbourne, New Zealand, and Tokyo; King’s College, London, the Yorkshire College, and the University Colleges of Sheffield, Newcastle, and Dundee; the Royal and Chemical Societies, the Society of Chemical Industry, British Association, the Lister and Pasteur Institutes, and a number of the academies and scientific societies of Germany, Italy, Holland, and America. In addition a large number of congratulatory letters and messages were received from distinguished friends, chemists, and physicists throughout Europe, America, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas.
The celebration was held on April 22, 1904, in the beautiful Whitworth Hall of the Victoria University in the presence of a large and enthusiastic gathering of former students and colleagues, and of friends who had journeyed to Manchester to present addresses.
Of all these addresses, the one, he says in his autobiography, that touched him most nearly was that from his former pupils. It ran as follows:
We, the undersigned, all of whom have the honour to number ourselves among your pupils, desire on the occasion of the celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the date of your graduation as a Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Heidelberg to offer you our hearty congratulations, and to express our pleasure that you are able to be with us in health and strength to receive this testimony of our gratitude and esteem.
The half-century which has elapsed since the day of your Doctor promotion summa-cum-laude, has witnessed an extraordinary development in that branch of natural knowledge to which you have particularly devoted yourself. We recall with pride in how large a measure your own labours have contributed to that growth—by your work as an original investigator, by your literary productions, by your remarkable and almost unexampled success as a teacher, by the influence you have exerted in the organization and direction of societies concerned with Science, by your unceasing and well-directed efforts to secure for Science its due position in the scheme of National Education and the fuller recognition of its relations to the well-being of civilized communities. It was your good fortune at the outset of your career to come under the influence of illustrious chemical philosophers—Graham, Williamson, Bunsen. Your good fortune has been our great gain. You have not only worthily upheld the traditions associated with such names, but you have inspired others by your example. Your influence is to be seen in the creation of the great School of Chemistry in which you have laboured for thirty years, and in which you taught hundreds of pupils; it is equally felt in the many similar places throughout this kingdom which are modelled upon the lines you indicated, and which are to-day actuated by your method and example.
We gratefully recall the obligations that we are under to you as our teacher, and we cherish the memory of the signal services you have rendered to the Institution of which we are proud to be members. You came to it in the days of its precarious infancy, you assisted to rear it into a vigorous youth, sharing its aspirations, and stimulating its endeavours; you behold it now of age, and entering upon a great career.