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manufacturer, morphologist, zoologist, scientist, was born on Sept. 14, 1851, in Milwaukee, Wis. He was educated in the public and private schools of Milwaukee and in Janesville, Wis.; received the degree of C.E. from the Delaware Literary Institute of Franklin, N.Y., in 1866; during 1867-68 was a special student at Antioch College of Ohio; and from 1868-71 was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1871 he entered the employ of the Edward P. Allis Co.,
at Milwaukee, and remained actively associated with the company until 1889, when his father, the head of the company, died. Since that time he has devoted himself entirely to research studies, retaining at the same time his position as vice-pre
sident of the Edward P. Allis Co. In 1885 he established the Lake Laboratory in Milwaukee, Wis., maintaining it there for seven years. In 1890 went to Menton, France, where be has resided since then in the Palais de Carnoles, a property which h
ad formerly been a residence of [p.39] the prince of Monaco. In 1892 the Lake Laboratory was transferred to Menton, where it is known as the Allis Research Laboratory. Dr. Allis has made extensive research in vertebrate morphology; and especial
ly in the anatomy and development of the head of fishes. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Morphology. In 1903 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Wisconsin; in 1905 received the decoration of the Palmes Academiques with th
e title of Officier d'Acade-mie; and in 1907 received the decoration of the Legion d'Honneur with the title of chevalier. He is member of numerous scientific societies here and abroad.

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William P. Allis, Professor of Physics Emeritus, died at Mount Auburn Hospital, in Cambridge, on Friday, March 5. He was an authority on electrical discharges in gases and was instrumental in establishing MIT's leadership in plasma physics.
Born on November 15, 1901 in Menton, France, he received a B.S. in 1923 and a M.S. in 1924 from MIT, and a Sc.D. from the University of Nancy, France in 1925. He joined the Physics Department at MIT as Instructor in Physics in 1931, after postdoctoral research appointments at MIT, Princeton University and at the University of Munich where he worked with Arnold Sommerfeld. He was appointed as an Assistant Professor in 1934 and as full professor in 1950. He retired from MIT in1967.

During World War II he worked on magnetron theory at the Radiation Laboratory. He was commissioned as a Major, and later as a Lieutenant Colonel; he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the War Department in 1948 for his outstanding work during the war as liaison Officer for the National Defense Research Committee.

Following the war, he directed Project Ashby at the newly established Research Laboratory of Electronics studying the properties of plasmas. In 1962 he interrupted his research to serve as Assistant Secretary General for Scientific Affairs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), where he was in charge of making research grants to the fourteen NATO countries and directed NATO's advanced studies institutes.

Professor Allis was a visiting Professor at many Universities in the US and abroad and awarded the Legion of Honor in 1968 and Officier de La Legion d'Honneur in 1976. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Physical Society of London and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He started the American Physical Society's Gaseous Electronics Conference, serving as its chairman from 1949 to 1962 and served on numerous committees of the National Research Council. He authored and co-authored many papers, as well as books entitled Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, 1952; Motions of Ions and Electrons, (Handbuck der Physik, vol. 21), 1956; Nuclear Fusion, 1960; Waves in Anisotropic Plasmas, 1963; and Electrons, Ions and Waves, 1967