being desperately cramped and short on equipment. The situation improved a little in 1905 when the department was renamed as the "Zweites Physikalisches Instutut" ("Second [University] Physics Institute"), correctly implying a complementary status to "Erstes Physikalisches Instutut" ("First [University] Physics Institute") which, under the directorship of Ludwig Boltzmann, sustained its own reputation for brilliance in other branches of the rapidly expanding subjects-palette of interest to Physics researchers. Significant further improvement arrives in 1913 when significant additional space was made available within new institute buildings. It was in many ways much too late, however, since the outbreak in 1914 of the First World War was accompanied by dramatic funding cuts, while the young men were sent away to participate in the slaughter on the Italian front. By the time war ended, in 1918, the empire was destroyed, and intensifying austerity had left university funding a long way down the list of public priorities. Some of Exner's most brilliant former students found their way to America. He himself was already over 70 in 1918. Franz Exner retired from his university responsibilities in 1920 and died at Vienna in 1926. His body was buried at the large Sieveringer Cemetery on the western (then) outskirts of the city. Slightly more than ten years later, in 1937, a bronze tablet to his memory was produced by Michael Powolny and, with due ceremony, placed in the university's "Arcaded Court" in 1937. Achievements The extent of his contribution as an organiser and mentor, helping to ensure that Physics research was based on a sound footing from which the discoveries of the twentieth century might flow, has frequently led Exner's own research work to be downplayed or overlooked by commentators. His own researches nevertheless contributed significantly to the overall human knowledge-base. His earliest published work concerned determination of the temperature at which water will reach its maximum density. His focus between 1877 and 1894 was on the rapidly evolving field of electrochemistry and the chemical implications of galvanic processes in different materials. Subsequently he broadened his research interests to incorporate aspects of meteorology, spectroscopy and radioactivity, with a particular interest in measurement techniques involving atmospheric electricity. Inspired by the prospect of being able to determine more precisely the chemical compositions of some of the very many of meteorites that had accumulated in the university collection, during the later 1890s he turned to work on spectral analytic investigation, working