The subject of this memoir was of the essence of those men to whom Carlyle pays such a discerning tribute. Born towards the close of the Victorian era he grew to manhood and accomplished his life’s work in one of the most tempestuous and critical periods of our history; his influence during his lifetime, although exerted unobtrusively, was immense; his many and varied public services and his scientific achievements are testimonies to a life governed by high ideals and by unremitting industry; and not the least of his services were those he gave to the Royal Society of which he was a Fellow for upwards of thirty years. Alfred Charles Glyn Egerton, the fourth son of Colonel Sir Alfred Mordaunt Egerton, K.C.V.O., and the Hon. Mary Georgina Ormsby-Gore, eldest daughter of the 2nd Baron Harlech, was born on 11 October 1886 at Glyn Hall in Merioneth.