Every practical advantage gained in utilizing natural forces for the benefit of mankind can be traced back to a necessary basis established through fundamental research in pure science by men who had no other object than to ascertain the truth. If that kind of research ends progress in applied science must presently also end. Fundamental research requires systematic support because it does not present the manifest promise of immediate profits. I think the proposed organization for the purpose of securing such support is very important and will be of the greatest value. I am much gratified that Mr. Hoover is willing to give his great ability and prestige to making the new undertaking a success.

Judging from our progress in other fields, we do not lack competent men for research, officials of the academy explain. Too often, with the comfort of their families at heart, such men reluctantly accept well-paid industrial positions instead of poorly paid academic posts. The problem is to make these posts so attractive that the ablest men will seek and hold them permanently because of the opportunities they offer to advance knowledge by fundamental research. This can be done by providing adequate salaries, freedom from too much teaching or administration, necessary instruments and apparatus and skilled assistants to perform the extensive routine operations that scientific research involves. In short, able investigators should be given some such comfort in life, freedom of action and opportunity for constructive thought that industrial and administrative officers in this country, certainly of no larger calibre, habitually enjoy. One way to accomplish this is by establishing National Research Professorships, or similar positions, in cooperation with universities vitally interested in the advancement of science. One hundred National Research Fellowships, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board, are bringing the best advanced students in the physical and biological sciences and in medicine into research. The next important step is to improve the academic conditions under which such men, and more especially the mature investigators of demonstrated success, conduct their work.

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President Michelson, of the National Academy, in writing to Mr. Hoover to express his great satisfaction that he had undertaken to act as chairman of the trustees of the National Research Endowment, says:

I regard this as one of the most important and significant movements in the direction of helping to make the contributions to science worthy of the enterprise of America.

We can no longer plead youth and the pressure of building up the industries as an excuse for the unfavorable comparison of our own meager contributions with those of England, France and Germany. There can be no doubt that the situation would be immensely improved

if the prospects of the more promising men who have the talent and ability and the taste for the pursuit of scientific investigation could be made comparable with those of say a successful physician or lawyer.

There is not the slightest conflict between the purposes of the National Academy of Sciences and those of the Smithsonian Institution, which is seeking a large endowment fund to provide adequately for the important investigations of its large staff. These two scientific organizations enjoy most cordial relations, as Mr. Hoover indicated in his recent New York address when he strongly commended the efforts of the Smithsonian to obtain an endowment and referred to it as the great pioneer of all American research, which has inspired much of the work in progress to-day.

Dr. Robert A. Millikan writes as follows:

In the application of science to industry the United States has always taken a leading place among the nations, and our industries may be counted upon to see that she continues to do so. But no such claim to leadership in the field of fundamental science can as yet be made for her. For the sake of our own intellectual development, for the sake of the diffusion of the spirit and the method of science among her people, and for the sake of the future of her material progress as well-fundamental science of to-day being but the applied science of tomorrow her supreme need just now is for the stimulation of research in the fundamental sciences throughout the length and breadth of the land. This is why I regard the attempt to establish a National Research Endowment for the above purpose as one of the most important national movements ever launched in the United States.

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

PRESENTATION OF THE COPLEY MEDAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY TO PROFESSOR EINSTEIN

PRESENTATION of the Royal Society medals was made at the anniversary meeting of the society on November 30, by the retiring president, Sir Charles Sherrington. The following citation was made with the award of the Copley Medal to Professor Albert Einstein:

The name of Einstein is known to every one through the theory of relativity which he originated in 1905 and extended by a notable generalization in 1915. Einstein realized that the time and space with which we are so directly acquainted by experience can be no other than the fictitious local time and space of the moving system— the motion in this case being that of the earth; we have no means of determining, nor can physical science be concerned with, any absolute reckoning of space and time. After this Einstein was led to the identification of mass with energy-another result of far-reaching importance,

which allows us to know the exact amount of the store of energy so tantalizingly hidden within the atom.

There was a feeling that this theory of relativity for uniform motion must be a particular case of something more general; but observational knowledge seemed to oppose a decisive negative to any extension. It was Einstein again who found the way to the generalization by bringing gravitation into his scheme.

Einstein's general theory of relativity is remarkable alike for the brilliance of conception and the mastery of the mathematical implement required to develop it. The new law of gravitation must be reckoned the first fundamental advance in the subject since the time of Newton. It involves an interaction between gravitation and light, which had indeed been suspected by Newton and almost taken for granted by Laplace, though it dropped out of scientific speculation when the corpuscular theory of light gave way to the undulatory theory. The three crucial astronomical tests of Einstein's theory have all been verified-the motion of perihelion of Mercury, the deflection of light, and the red-shift of the spectral lines. The last-named proved the most difficult to test, but there is now general agreement that it is present in the solar spectrum. More recently Einstein's theory of gravitation has appealed to astronomers not merely as something which they are asked to test, but as a direct aid to the advancement of astronomical research. Invoked to decide the truth of a suspicion of transcendently high density in the "white dwarf'' stars, it has decided that in the companion of Sirius matter is compressed to the almost incredible density of a ton to the cubic inch.

The other direction in which modern physical theory has broken away altogether from the ideas of the nineteenth century is in the quantum theory. Probably no one would claim that he really understands the quantum theory. For such illumination as we do possess we are in great measure indebted to Professor Einstein. In 1905, almost at the same time as he published his first work on relativity, he put forward the famous law of the photoelectric effect, according to which the energy of a single quantum is employed in separating an electron from an atom and endowing it with kinetic energy. This was, perhaps, the first recognition that the development of the new quantum mechanics was not to be tied to classical mechanics by pictures of quasi-mechanical oscillators or other intermediate conceptions, but was to proceed independently on radically different principles. Noteworthy contributions followed on the theory of ionization of material, and on the problem of the specific heats of solids. In 1917 Einstein reached another fundamental resultnamely, the general equation connecting absorption and emission coefficients of all kinds. This gives deep insight into the origin of Planck's law of radiation, besides providing new formulae with the widest practical applications.

THE AWARD OF GOLD MEDALS BY THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY THE American Geographical Society has awarded the David Livingstone Centenary Medal for 1925 for

"scientific achievement in the field of geography of the southern hemisphere" to Luis Riso Patrón, director of the Oficina de Límites of Chile in recognition of his contributions to Chilean cartography. Senor Patrón headed the first Chilean Commission to make a precise survey of the Cordillera of the Andes. He represented Chile in the Argentine-Chilean boundary arbitration (1902) and edited the maps of the Chilean boundary surveys. As director of the Oficina de Mensura de Tierras he was responsible for the great map of Chile on a scale of 1: 500,000. His intimate knowledge of the geography of his country is revealed in the recently published "Diccionario Jeográfico de Chile" (1924).

Award of the David Livingstone Centenary Medal for 1926 is made to Erich von Drygalski, of the University of Munich, for his work in the South Polar regions. Dr. von Drygalski had already carried out notable glaciological investigations in the Arctic as leader of the Greenland Expedition of the Berlin Geographical Society (1891-1893) when he undertook the German Antarctic Expedition of 1900-1903. The latter expedition, which discovered a part of the Antarctic continent about the 90th meridian east, was characterized by an intensive study of all branches of natural science in the field of exploration. The important scientific results in 18 folio volumes appeared between 1905 and 1921.

The Charles P. Daly Medal for 1925 is awarded to Brigadier-General David L. Brainard in recognition of his notable achievements on the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition under Greely in 1881-1884. General (then Sergeant) Brainard took a leading part in the exploratory work of the expedition. In particular his name is associated with Lieutenant Lockwood's in the discoveries along the north coast of Greenland when the farthest north of the time, 83° 24′, was reached, a position only a few minutes of latitude from the northernmost point of Greenland.

The Charles P. Daly Medal for 1925 is awarded to Captain Robert A. Bartlett for his services to Arctic exploration. As commander of the Roosevelt (1905– 1909) he took a leading part in Peary's expedition to the Pole. With a sledge party he himself reached a latitude of 87° 47′ N.-the highest latitude attained in the Arctic next to that of Peary himself. On the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-1918 he commanded the Karluk and in the face of grave difficulties accomplished the rescue of the survivors from Wrangel Island, whither they had proceeded after the Karluk was crushed by ice. In 1917 under his able seamanship the Third Crocker Land Relief Expedition achieved success in the face of serious and exceptional ice conditions.

The Cullum Geographical Medal for 1925 is

awarded to Pedro C. Sanchez, director of the Central Mexican Bureau of Geography and Climatology in recognition of his contributions to Mexican cartography. Senor Sanchez has been in charge of the geodetic service of Mexico since 1912. He is responsible for the topographic survey of the Federal District on the scale of 1: 100,000; the map.of the state of Vera Cruz, 1:400,000 (1918), and the Atlas Geográfico de la República de México (1920). He has also conducted explorations in little-known parts of his country.

The Cullum Geographical Medal for 1925 is awarded to Harvey C. Hayes, research physicist of the United States Navy, for his invention of the Sonic Depth Finder. This instrument designed in the interests of navigation has put into the hands of science a practical means of mapping the ocean floor in detail and of furnishing data for more effective study of continent building and of the general problem of isostasy.

The Cullum Geographical Medal for 1925 is awarded to Lucien Gallois, of the University of Paris, for his work in the advancement of geography. His earlier studies established his reputation in the field of historical geography. His later work, embracing both physical and human aspects and finding expression in regional studies, furnishes an admirable exposition of the broad modern concept of geography. By his efforts as teacher, as collaborator and editor of the Annales de Géographie, and as president of the Association de Géographes Français, and especially by the spirit and method of his writings, his influence has carried far afield.

REVISION OF EDUCATIONAL METHODS IN THE YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

A THOROUGH GOING revision of its educational methods with a view to placing less emphasis on routine class work and more on independent thought and research is planned by the Yale School of Medicine, according to an announcement made by Dean Milton C. Winternitz.

The faculty is considering the abolition of the year system of study and the resultant division of the student body into classes. This program will also involve the abolition of the system of examinations at the end of the different courses. The student will be allowed to select the sequence of his studies in the subjects which at present comprise the first two years of the medical curriculum, and then after qualifying for the clinical subjects, he will again be allowed liberty of choice. Their arrangement and his completion of them in any period of time will be largely a matter of his choice and ability. Admission to a course will depend on his fitness for the work as

determined by the instructor in charge of it. This is the reverse of the present practice. A teacher now has no voice in determining what students shall enter his classes. He determines only whether they shall proceed into other classes. Thus, the student often thinks only of the examination which he is to take at the end of the year, and misses the application of the knowledge he is being offered.

Dean Winternitz made the following statement regarding the plan:

These changes may seem radical but they are in accord with adopted systems of graduate education, and medical education is graduate education.

There must, of course, be some check on the students' accomplishments; group examinations, as well as the graduating thesis, will serve this purpose. For the convenience of the faculty such examinations may be given at fixed times, but within reasonable limits the student may determine when he will present himself for such a test.

Aside from other advantages, such a system will be equally valuable to the student who acquires knowledge rapidly and to his slower colleague. It is hoped that by the elimination of the class system, the pupil who acquires knowledge less rapidly will be less reluctant to spend more time in preparation, while the more brilliant scholar will be more willing to spend longer periods in investigation and specialization.

THE 1926 MEETING OF THE PACIFIC DIVISION OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION THE 1926 annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held at Mills College, California, from June 16 to 19. Mills College is delightfully situated in the foothills near Oakland, California, and is easily accessible from all points of the San Francisco bay region. Established in 1852 it has played an important part in the intellectual life and development of the Pacific Coast and now stands unique as the only accredited college for women west of the Mississippi. With a campus of 150 acres, beautifully designed landscape and buildings, it will prove a most attractive and commodious meeting place for the annual meeting. As there is a large membership of the Pacific Division in this vicinity a very successful meeting is assured.

Preparations for the meeting are already in progress. A research conference, under the direction of President Aurelia Henry Reinhardt, will be arranged on the relation of the college to research. A symposium on the constitution of matter or a kindred subject will be arranged, with physicists of note participating, and one or more public addresses will be given by visiting European scientists.

It is likely that the greater portion of the 27

affiliated societies of the Pacific Division will arrange to hold their annual meetings at Mills College.

A meeting of the affiliation committee, comprising delegates from the various affiliated societies, will be held early in February to consider matters relating to their respective meetings.

The Executive Committee of the Pacific Division is constituted as follows:

Robert G. Aitken, president; associate director, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, California.

Joel H. Hildebrand, vice-president and chairman of the executive committee; professor of chemistry and dean of men, University of California, Berkeley. Walter S. Adams, director, Mount Wilson Observatory, Pasadena.

Bernard Benfield, consulting engineer, Kohl Building, San Francisco.

Leonard B. Loeb, assistant professor of physics, University of California, Berkeley.

E. G. Martin, professor of physiology, Stanford University.

Emmet Rixford, professor of surgery, Stanford University.

J. O. Snyder, professor of zoology, Stanford University. O. F. Stafford, professor of chemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. FREDERICK GARDNER COTTRELL, director of the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture, has been awarded the gold medal for 1924 of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America. The medal was presented at a luncheon held in his honor at the Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C., on December 7.

PROFESSOR A. N. TALBOT, head of the department of theoretical and applied mechanics in the University of Illinois, has been elected an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

DR. C. E. K. MEES, director of research in the laboratories of the Eastman Kodak Co., has been made an honorary member of the French Photographic Society in recognition of his work on the fundamentals underlying the physics and chemistry of photography.

DRS. FEWKES, Swanton, Michelson and Mr. Hewitt, of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, have been notified of their election to honorary membership in the Hermann Barth Gesellschaft, of Vienna.

DR. RICHARD MOLDENKE, of New Jersey, was recently chosen to be the first recipient of the Joseph S. Seaman gold medal, awarded by the American Foundrymen's Association in recognition of his many contributions to the foundry industry.

MR. GEORGE EASTMAN, chairman of the board of directors of the Eastman Kodak Company, has been elected an honorary member of the Synthetic Organic Manufacturers Association in recognition of the work done by the company in its research laboratories in the manufacture of synthetic organic chemicals.

SIR WILLIAM BRAGG had conferred upon him the honorary degree of laws by St. Andrews University, on the occasion of the opening of the new laboratories of physics and chemistry at the University on December 4.

DR. HANS OSCAR JUEL, professor of botany at the University of Upsala, and Dr. Svante Marbeck, director of the Botanical Gardens at Lund, Sweden, have been elected foreign members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

PROFESSOR H. A. LORENTZ, of Leyden, on December 11 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment as doctor of mathematics and philosophy. Among those who were present at Leyden University to honor the distinguished scholar were Professor A. S. Eddington, of Cambridge; Madame Curie, of Paris, and Professor Einstein, of Berlin.

DR. R. D. M. VERBEEK, the well-known East Indian geologist, has celebrated his eightieth birthday at The Hague. A "gift-book" was presented to him, containing forty-five scientific contributions from geologists in the Netherlands, the Netherlands East Indies, Japan, the Malay States, Indo-China, New Zealand, Australia, Papua, the Philippines, the United States, Germany and France.

THE university council of the University of Wisconsin has voted to recommend that the mining engineering building, which was largely designed by Dean Stephen M. Babcock and in which he carried on his work for seventeen years, be named Babcock Hall in his honor. Professor Babcock recently celebrated his eighty-second birthday.

S. W. PARR, professor of applied chemistry in the University of Illinois, has been elected to the board of directors of the American Chemical Society to succeed Professor William Hoskins, of Chicago.

DR. HARRY C. OBERHOLSER, ornithologist in the Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture, has been elected president of the Biological Society of Washington.

DR. A. J. CARLSON, professor of physiology at the University of Chicago, was elected president of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago at a meeting of the board of governors on December 9. Dr. Robert B. Preble was elected vice-president; Dr. George H. Coleman, secretary; Dr. John Favill, treasurer, and Dr. Ludvig Hektoen, chairman of the board.

DR. ALBERT W. BUCK, of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, has been named superintendent of the New Haven Hospital, to succeed Dr. Willard C. Rappleye, who recently resigned to become chairman of the International Commission on Medical Education.

EARL H. MORRIS, who has been in charge of the excavations and the restoration work of the Carnegie Institution's Chichen Itza project, is to return to the American Museum of Natural History as associate curator of American archeology.

DR. MARGARET MEAD, now studying among the Samoans as an anthropological fellow of the National Research Council, has been appointed assistant curator of ethnology of the American Museum of Natural History. She will take up her duties in September.

ROSCOE NUNN, of Nashville, Tenn., has been appointed meteorologist in charge of the Baltimore Weather Bureau Station to take the place of James H. Spencer.

WALTER F. RITTMAN, of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, has been appointed consulting chemical engineer to the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the Department of Commerce.

PROFESSOR V. V. USPENSKY, a member of the Russian Academy of Science, has been appointed lecturer in mathematics at the University of Michigan for the semester beginning next February.

SIR RONALD Ross, director of the new Ross Institute of Tropical Diseases, left for Ceylon on December 11. His journey is being undertaken at the invitation of the Ceylon Association and he will investigate conditions in the island from the point of view of malaria control.

DR. KEIJI ITO, consulting engineer of the Toho Electric Power Company and professor of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is visiting the United States, where he is making a study of the application of motors to industrial equipment and household appli

ances.

DR. VLADIMIR ULÉHLA, professor of plant physiology in the University of Brunn, Czechoslovakia, who has been working with Dr. D. T. MacDougal, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, sailed for Europe on December 19. Dr. Uléhla has visited many laboratories in the United States for the purpose of obtaining information to be used in completing the buildings and equipment of the laboratories of the University of Brunn.

DEAN WILLIAM FREDERICK BADE, of the Pacific School of Religion, will be the delegate of the University of California to the Archeological Congress, which convenes in Jerusalem next May. Dr. Bade is also

heading an archeological expedition to Palestine, the British Department of Antiquities having signified its intention to grant him a permit to excavate Tel-enNasbeh (by many regarded as the biblical Mizpah), near Jerusalem, during the coming spring.

F. D. KERN, head of the department of botany and dean of the graduate school at Pennsylvania State College, has been granted a year's leave of absence ending July 1, 1926, and from September to June is serving as acting dean of the college of agriculture of the University of Porto Rico.

PROFESSOR CHARLES SCHUCHERT, of Yale University, will give a course in stratigraphic geology at the University of Texas during the winter term of the present year. The course will include principles of stratigraphy; the stratigraphy of North America with special reference to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic; and index fossils which characterize the major divisions of the geologic record.

DR. GEORGE L. STREETER, chief of the department of embryology of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D. C., gave an illustrated lecture before the Baltimore City Medical Society on December 4 on "The Miller Specimen, the Youngest Known Human Embryo." Dr. Dean Lewis, of the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, spoke on "Surgical Diseases of the Large Bowel."

DR. HENRY SEWALL, emeritus professor of medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, will give a series of six lectures for the San Diego Medical Lectureship Fund, San Diego, beginning January 4, 1926, on "Physiology," which will pertain chiefly to the metabolism of respiration and the endocrines.

THE University of Liverpool has established a postgraduate scholarship in oceanography in memory of the late Sir William Herdman. A sum of £1,000 has been contributed for this purpose.

PROFESSOR EDWARD SYLVESTER MORSE, director of the Peabody Academy in Salem, Mass., and formerly professor of comparative anatomy and zoology at Bowdoin College and at the University of Tokyo, died on December 21 in the eighty-eighth year of his age.

DR. JOHN TAYLOR BOTTOMLEY, associate in surgery in the graduate courses in medicine at the Harvard Medical School, died on December 17 in the fiftyseventh year of his age.

DR. JAMES T. PRIESTLEY, of Des Moines, Iowa, for many years a prominent physician and well-known scientific man in the West, died on December 11 at the age of seventy-four years. He was a grandson of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen.

DR. EDMUND KNECHT, associate professor of ap