modern days the prime
minister of a native state. It was in the former sense that the grant of
the _dewanny_ to the East India Company in 1765 became the foundation of
the British empire in India.

DEWAR, SIR JAMES (1842- ), British chemist and physicist, was born at
Kincardine-on-Forth, Scotland, on the 20th of September 1842. He was
educated at Dollar Academy and Edinburgh University, being at the latter
first a pupil, and afterwards the assistant, of Lord Playfair, then
professor of chemistry; he also studied under Kekule at Ghent. In 1875
he was elected Jacksonian professor of natural experimental philosophy
at Cambridge, becoming a fellow of Peterhouse, and in 1877 he succeeded
Dr J. H. Gladstone as Fullerian professor of chemistry in the Royal
Institution, London. He was president of the Chemical Society in 1897,
and of the British Association in 1902, served on the Balfour Commission
on London Water Supply (1893-1894), and as a member of the Committee on
Explosives (1888-1891) invented cordite jointly with Sir Frederick Abel.
His scientific work covers a wide field. Of his earlier papers, some
deal with questions of organic chemistry, others with Graham's
hydrogenium and its physical constants, others with high temperatures,
e.g. the temperature of the sun and of the electric spark, others again
with electro-photometry and the chemistry of the electric arc. With
Professor J. G. M'Kendrick, of Glasgow, he investigated the
physiological action of light, and examined the changes which take place
in the electrical condition of the retina under its influence. With
Professor G. D. Liveing, one of his colleagues at Cambridge, he began in
1878 a long series of spectroscopic observations, the later of which
were devoted to the spectroscopic examination of various gaseous
constituents separated from atmospheric air by the aid of low
temperatures; and he was joined by Professor J. A. Fleming, of
University College, London, in the investigation of the electrical
behaviour of substances cooled to very low temperatures. His name is
most widely known in connexion with his work on the liquefaction of the
so-called permanent gases and his researches at temperatures approaching
the zero of absolute temperature. His interest in this branch of inquiry
dates back at least as far as 1874, when he discussed the "Latent Heat
of Liquid Gases" before the British Association. In 1878 he devoted a
Friday evening lecture at the Royal Inst