STEVENS, Walter Le Conte, physicist, born in Gordon county, Georgia, 17 June, 1847. He is the nephew of John and Joseph Le Conte. After his graduation at the University of South Carolina in 1868 he spent the year 1876-'7 at the University of Virginia, and meanwhile had held the professorship of chemistry at Oglethorpe college, Atlanta, Georgia, in 1871-'2, and taught physics at Chatham academy, Savannah, Georgia, in 1873-'6. Professor Stevens then settled in New York, and, after teaching several years, was called in 1882 to the chair of mathematics and physics in Packer collegiate institute in Brooklyn. In connection with his class-work he has invented various improved forms of physical apparatus, of which his organ-pipe sonometer and reversible stereoscope are the best known, descriptions of which have been published in the "American Journal of Science." He is a member of scientific societies and secretary of the Brooklyn academy of science and art. The honorary degree of Ph.D. was conferred on him by the University of Georgia in 1882, in recognition of his writings on "Physiological Optics," which were published simultaneously in the "American Journal of Science " and the London "Philosophical Magazine" in 1881-'2. Professor Stevens has written for the "North American Review," the " Popular Science Monthly," and other journals, prepared the parts relating to the physics of the earth's crust, the ocean, and the atmosphere in " Appletons' Physical Geography" (New York, 1887), and rewrote J. Dorman Steeles's " Popular Physics" (1888).