Prof. Thomas Purdie, F.R.S

THE value of a close, sympathetic relationship between professor and student is perhaps not fully recognised, and certainly can be properly appreciated only when it has formed part of a personal experience. The power of winning the affection and confidence of young men was a marked feature of the personality of Prof. Purdie, whose death was announced in NATURE of December 21 last; and no record of his life, however slight, would be complete without special reference to the wonderful insight and understanding that bound him to his students. During the twenty-five years he occupied the chair of chemistry in St. Andrews he devoted himself to the development of character in the undergraduate quite as much as to the simpler duty of converting him into a chemist.