Roscoe quickly acquired an influential position in the Philosophical Society. He served for many years as its secretary, and ultimately became its president. He was the first recipient of its Dalton medal, awarded to him in recognition of his efforts to throw light upon the reasoning which led Dalton to the formulation of his great generalization, by the publication in association with his friend and former pupil, Dr. Harden, of “A New View of the Origin of Dalton’s Atomic Theory” (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.), based upon Dalton’s manuscripts and laboratory note-books in the possession of the Society. The book will be referred to at greater length when considering Roscoe’s contributions in general to the literature of chemistry.
In the Society at the time Roscoe joined it were several men of scientific eminence, or who played notable parts in the industrial life of the district—among them Joule, Schunck, Fairbairn, W. C. Williamson, Angus Smith, and Crace Calvert. Joule, a pupil of Dalton, a shy, retiring man, was several times President of the Society, and Roscoe, who greatly admired his character and powers as an original thinker, became one of his most intimate friends. In the later years of his life Joule, who was a member of a brewing firm at Stone in Staffordshire, suffered great reverses of fortune, and was only saved from actual poverty by the grant of a Civil List pension, which Roscoe, with the help of Tyndall, Huxley, and other friends of science, was instrumental in obtaining. A letter which Roscoe wrote to the _Times_ resulted in the creation of the Joule Memorial Fund, administered by the Royal Society. It takes the form of an international studentship or grant to assist research in those branches of physical science more immediately connected with Joule’s work. With the assistance of Lord Kelvin, he secured the placing of a tablet to Joule’s memory in Westminster Abbey.
In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall a life-size marble statue by Gilbert of the discoverer of the Law of the Conservation of Energy stands opposite to a statue of the author of the Atomic Theory. It was unveiled in 1893 by Joule’s most intimate scientific friend, Lord Kelvin. Concerning this unveiling, Roscoe could occasionally be induced to tell a story. In proposing a vote of thanks to Lord Kelvin, he stated that one inducement that drew him to Manchester was that he might sit at the feet of Joule, whose name was as well known on the Continent as that of Newton, but he found that all that the Manchester of that day knew of Joule was his Stone Ales. One of his lady auditors, in complimenting him upon his little speech, observed: “Of course I quite understood your remark about sitting at Dr. Joule’s feet, but why make allusion to his _toe-nails_!”