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Lord Bacon.

“He sounds a trumpet call to a new and universal effort of free and circumspect intelligence” says a present day critic (The Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson) of Lord Bacon. Few names stand higher in the intellectual annals of the world than the name of this great Englishman who was born at York House, in the Strand on 22nd January, 1561. At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was educated, Bacon absorbed the learning of his age with extraordinary facility and became deeply versed in classical literature. After filling with distinction many important positions in the government of his day, he retired to his country seat and devoted himself more seriously to philosophy. It was his great merit to introduce the method of inductive reasoning into science— the method which has been so prolific of fundamental results in the fields of discovery and invention. The life's work of this great Englishman (though marred by charges of bribery proved against him, and which cannot be condoned), has placed not only our Empire but the whole world under a heavy debt of gratitude. “Besides the unparalleled services which science received from him,” says one biographer, “to his original genius one may directly ascribe many, if not most, of those large improvements in the arts of life which have raised this nation to the highest place among the countries of the world.”

Sir Isaac Newton was the scientific genius who revolutionised man's conception of the physical universe. He was born on Christmas Day, 1642, at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire. At the age of eighteen he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he applied himself to the study of mathematics. He was obliged to quit Cambridge when the plague broke out, during which time his researches led him to his first great discoveries—that of the minominal theorem, the differential calculus and the integral calculus. About this time too, Newton conceived the great idea of universal gravitation. The demonstration of the law of universal gravitation was beset with enormous difficulties, but Newton's genius surmounted them all. It is interesting to observe that the great English astronomer Halley (after whom the famous comet is called) was entirely responsible for the completion and publication of Newton's “Principia.” Halley not only read the proofs of the immortal work but paid for its publication out of his own pocket. Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and the most distinguished people of Europe, including Royalty, showered honours upon him. It was Newton who said: “I know not what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” He died on 20th March, 1727, and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey.

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On handing over the statute of Charles Darwin to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales as representative of the British Museum on 9th June, 1885, Professor Huxley spoke on behalf of the Memorial Committee of the Royal Society as follows:—“Your Royal Highness,— It is now three years since the announcement of the death of our famous countryman, Charles Darwin, gave rise to a manifestation of public feeling, not only in these realms, but throughout the civilised world, which, if I mistake not, is without precedent in the modest annals of Scientific biography……”

Like Newton before him, it was Darwin's privilege to discover a great law of Nature. After twenty years of laborious work he found that “Selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants.” Charles Darwin was born at Shrewsbury on 12th February, 1809. Natural history was the chief interest of his life, and he dropped every other subject to study it. He published, in 1859, the results of his labours in the “Origin of Species,” a book which created an immense sensation throughout the world of science. In 1871 was published his “Descent of Man,” in which work he produced an array of evidence for the evolution of man himself. The enormous advances made in every branch of science during the past sixty years owe much to the influence of Darwin's work. He died on 19th April, 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.