Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE Botanical Society of America, at its recent de meeting in Kansas City, elected the following corresponding members: Professors A. Engler and K. Correns, of the University of Berlin; Professor C. Sauvageau, of the University of Bordeaux; S. Nawaschin and Professor R. Willstätter, of the University of Munich. Previously elected corresponding members are Professors V. H. Blackman, F. C. Bower, Hugo De Vries, K. von Goebel and A. C. Seward.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

M. CAMILLE MATIGNON, professor of mineralogical chemistry at the University of Paris, has been elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in the section of chemistry.

THE nomination of Professors T. Madsen and P. Teissier as honorary foreign members of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium has been approved by royal decree.

THE title of emeritus professor is to be conferred ha: on Sir John Cadman, lately professor of mining, on his resigning his appointment as honorary professor and adviser to the mining department at the University of Birmingham.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

DR. CHARLES H. MAYO, of Rochester, Minn., a member of the board of regents of the American College of Surgeons, was given a dinner on March 3, by 175 members of the college from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia who were in attendance at the district meeting of the organization in Cumberland.

DR. LOUIS I. HARRIS, New York Commissioner of Health, was the guest of honor at a dinner in the Hotel Commodore, New York, on March 5. Among the speakers, besides Commissioner Harris, were Dr. James Alexander Miller, president of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association; Dr. Livingston Farrand, president of Cornell University; Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow, of Yale University, and Dr. S. S. Goldwater, director of Mount Sinai Hospital.

THE Syracuse Academy of Medicine gave a dinner on February 2 in honor of Dr. Robert A. Hatcher, professor of pharmacology at the Cornell University Medical College, preceding an address by Dr. Hatcher on "The Relation of Pharmacology to Rational Therapeutics."

DR. A. J. CARLSON, professor of physiology at the University of Chicago, has been elected to succeed Dr. Julius Stieglitz (resigned) on the council on pharmacy and chemistry of the American Medical Association.

GEORGE S. DAVISON has been elected president of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the year 1926.

AT a meeting of the American Conference on Hospital Service, Chicago, February 17, Dr. Frank Billings, Chicago, was elected honorary president; Dr. Sigsmund S. Goldwater, New York, president; Dr. Ralph B. Seem, Chicago, and Mrs. Carl H. Davis, Milwaukee, vice-presidents, and Dr. Harry E. Mock, Chicago, treasurer.

DR. WILLIAM K. GREGORY, professor of vertebrate paleontology at Columbia University, was recently appointed curator of fishes at the American Museum of Natural History.

DR. ELLERY H. HARVEY, of Madison, Wisconsin, has joined the research staff of Swift and Company, Chicago.

PROFESSOR S. F. ASHBY has resigned his position as mycologist and bacteriologist at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad, to accept the post of mycologist to the Imperial Bureau of Mycology with headquarters at Kew.

F. DEBENHAM, fellow and tutor of Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, has been appointed director of the newly formed Polar Research Institute at the university.

DR. DONALD MCKAY MORRISON has been appointed to the Canadian fellowship of the Ramsay Memorial Fellowship Trust and will study at the University of Cambridge.

THE Swarthmore College expedition, which went to Sumatra to observe the total eclipse of the sun in January, arrived in Boston on March 7. The party included Professor John A. Miller, Dr. H. D. Curtis, Professor Ross W. Marriott and Mr. D. B. McLaughlin.

DR. ROBERT CUSHMAN MURPHY, assistant director of the American Museum of Natural History, with Jesse Metcalf, will sail on March 20 for the island of Komodo, Dutch East Indies, where they will collect reptiles.

DR. HARRY N. HOLMES, head of the department of chemistry of Oberlin College, who is in Europe during the current session, recently spent two weeks in Italy. In Milan he visited Professor Bruni, of the Royal Polytechnic School, and at Turin gave a lecture on "Colloid Chemistry" before the chemical staffs of the university, the School of Mines and the Royal Engineering School. He also discussed his colloid research work with a small group of the faculty of the University of Rome. He has been invited to deliver lectures in March at the Universities of Leyden and Utrecht.

DR. G. J. HUCKER, associate bacteriologist at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station,

has been granted a travel fellowship by the International Educational Board for a year's travel and study in Europe. Dr. Hucker will sail in August and plans to devote his time to a further study of the Micrococci, particularly the nomenclature and physiology of the group, in association with Professor St. John-Brooks at Lister Institute, London; Professor Barthel at Stockholm, and Professor Orla-Jensen at Copenhagen.

DR. JOHN E. GUBERLET has a leave of absence from the zoology department of the University of Washington and is spending some months at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, where he is acting head of the department of zoology and is doing research work. on animal parasites. Dr. C. H. Edmondson, permanent head of the department, is making a scientific tour around the world.

DR. J. W. GIDLEY, of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, left Washington on February 16 to renew his studies of remains of ancient man at Melbourne, Florida.

PROFESSOR ERNEST COHEN, director of the Van't Hoff Laboratories, University of Utrecht, Holland, will give advanced courses in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago during the first term of the summer quarter. Professor Cohen is president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry which will meet in the United States in September.

PROFESSOR J. N. BRØNSTED, of Copenhagen, will be visiting professor of chemistry at Yale University during the first term of the university year 1926–27.

DR. MAYNARD M. METCALF, of the Johns Hopkins University, who expected to return about March 1 from his six months biological research trip to South America, recently made an address at a meeting of the Rotary Club at Ancon, Panama, Canal Zone.

DR. HENRY C. SHERMAN, professor of chemistry, Columbia University, lectured on "Recent Advances in the Chemistry of Nutrition," at the University of Delaware, on February 16; to the Science Teachers Association of Washington, on February 17; at the University of Virginia, February 18, and to the Richmond section of the American Chemical Society, February 19. Dr. Sherman also lectured on "Chemistry as a Profession" at the Vassar College Vocational Conference on February 27 at Poughkeepsie.

DR. GEORGE C. SOUTHWORTH, of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., addressed a joint meeting of the Washington Academy of Sciences and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (Washington Section) in Washington on March 9, on the subject of "Some Interesting Things about Telephone Transmission."

DR. T. G. DELBRIDGE, supervisor of the process division of the Atlantic Refining Company, will give a lecture before the Franklin Institute, on March 25, on the "Cracking of Petroleum.”

ON February 27, Dr. Roy W. Miner, curator of the department of lower invertebrates in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, delivered an address to the Royal Canadian Institute on the subject "Hunting Corals on the Bottom of the Sea."

PROFESSOR KNUD FABER, of the University of Copenhagen, lectured under the auspices of the Herter Lecture Fund, on February 18, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, on "Disturbances of Blood Sugar Regulation."

IN celebration of the centenary of the death of Stanislas Staszic, scientific worker, business man and statesman, the Polish government has restored to the Warsaw Scientific Society the palace presented to that body by Staszic, but afterwards confiscated by the Russians.

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made of the establishment of the "Edward Livingston Coster Memorial Library" of railroad engineering volumes at the Pennsylvania State College library, the gift of the widow of the late Edward Livingston Coster.

DR. FREDERICK HARVEY BLODGETT (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins 1910), who recently joined the biology department of Washington Square College, New York University, died on March 4.

DR. ALBERT H. TUTTLE, Boston surgeon, formerly instructor in entomology at the Bussey Institute of Harvard University, died on March 1.

WILLIAM J. GREEN, for nearly forty years horticulturist at the Ohio Experiment Station and one of the pioneers in horticultural investigation, died recently, aged seventy-six years.

B. N. PEACH, F.R.S., formerly district geologist on H.M. Geological Survey, England, died on January 29, aged eighty-three years.

DR. M. B. R. SWANN, fellow of Caius College and demonstrator in pathology in the University of Cambridge, died from blood poisoning contracted during a post-mortem examination, on February 16, aged thirty-two years.

PROFESSOR D. S. CAPPER, formerly professor of engineering at King's College, London, died on February 12, aged sixty-one years.

PROFESSOR EDUARD HACKEL, the eminent Austrian agrostologist, died at his home in Attersee, on February 17, at the age of seventy-six years. Professor Hackel published numerous works upon the taxonomy of grasses, the best known of which is his monograph

[ocr errors][ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

f the S

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

mes

[ocr errors]

DR. N. HJALMAR NILSSON, for thirty-five years head of the Swedish Seed Association and director of the experiment station of that association at Svalöf, recently died, at the age of sixty-nine years.

THE United States Civil Service Commission announces the following open competitive examinations, the receipt of applications for which close on the dates indicated: April 13, associate engineer (electrical, mechanical or signal) at a salary of $3,000; assistant engineer (electrical, mechanical or signal) at a salary of $2,400; April 17, junior engineer at a salary of $1,860; junior metallurgist at a salary of $1,860; junior chemical engineer at a salary of $1,860; April 20, research physicist (radio) at a salary of $5,400; May 1, junior chemist at a salary of $1,860; assistant scientific aid at a salary of $1,500; junior scientific aid at a salary of $1,320.

the

[ocr errors]

PLI

THE seventh annual meeting of the Southwestern Division of the American Association for the Ad

vancement of Science was held at Phoenix, Arizona, during the week of February 15. It was the most successful meeting held by the division and was more at largely attended than any previous meeting, there being over two hundred registered. A full report of the meeting will appear in SCIENCE shortly. The eighth annual meeting of the division is to be held in 1927 at Santa Fe, New Mexico, at a date to be determined later.

THE French Association for the Advancement of Science will celebrate its jubilee this year at the annual meeting to be held at Lyons. An international exhibition for the advancement of science, to include all branches of science and its applications, is being organized for July 24 to August 1. M. Pilon, 23 rue Casimir Perier, Paris, has been appointed commissaire général of the exhibition.

THE twelfth International Physiological Congress will meet at Stockholm from August 3 to 6, 1926. The address of the secretary is Dr. G. Liljestrand, Karolinska Institut, Stockholm, Sweden. Professor J. E. Johansson is to preside at the meeting.

THE thirty-sixth annual meeting of the Ohio Academy of Science will be held at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, on April 9 and 10. Requests for information regarding the meeting, hotel accom

modations or other service will receive prompt consideration if addressed to the chairman of the local committee, Dr. Dwight M. Delong, or to the secretary, Dr. William H. Alexander, 16 East Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio.

THE thirty-first annual meeting of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters will be held at Ann Arbor from March 31 to April 2. The presidential address will be given by Charles H. Cooley on "The Roots of Social Knowledge."

THE American Society of Mammalogists will hold its eighth annual meeting at the American Museum of Natural History on April 28, 29 and 30. Special exhibits will be arranged for the mammalogists in the halls and laboratories of the departments of mammals, vertebrate paleontology and comparative anatomy. Papers will be given in morning and afternoon sessions during the conference.

THE Association of Chemical Equipment Manufacturers will hold its second annual exposition from May 10 to 15 in Cleveland. This exposition is managed by a national trade association, the aggregate worth of which is close to $1,000,000,000.

PUBLIC lectures for the months of March and April are being given at the New York Botanical Garden on Saturday afternoons at 3:30 as follows: March 6, "Poetry in the Names of Flowers," Miss Laura Lee Rogers; March 13, "Plant Arrow-Poisons: Their Sources, Preparation and Effects," Dr. Ralph H. Cheney; March 20, "Wild Flowers and their Insect Visitors," Professor Oliver P. Medsger; March 27, "Botanical Travel in Peru and Chile," Dr. Francis W. Pennell; April 3, "The Flowers of the Prize Garden," Mr. Kenneth R. Boynton; April 10, "A Historical Review of the Study of Fossil Plants," Dr. Arthur Hollick; April 17, "The Desert Vegetation of the Southwest," Professor John W. Harshberger; April 24, "Narcissi, or Daffodils," Mrs. Wheeler H. Peckham.

THE Sigma Xi Club of Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., is presenting the following program during the current school year: October 22, Edward A. Fath, "What is a Star?" November 20, Edward Bartow, "Progress in Water Purification and Sewage Disposal." December 10, Herbert C. Wilson, "The Motions of the Stars." February 12, Wm. O. Beal, "Star Clusters and Nebulae." March 18, Charles A. Culver, "Technical Problems involved in Radio Broadcasting." April 22, Curvin H. Gingrich, "The Solar System." May 20, Neil S. Dungay, "Recent Researches on Scarlet Fever."

THE National Research Council announces that a limited number of fellowships will be available for

the year 1926-27 for qualified candidates wishing to prepare for work in the field of child study and parent education. Only candidates with the bachelor's degree from an accredited institution who have had previous preparation and experience in a related field of work will be considered. Applications must be received by April 5. Blanks and information may be had from the Division of Anthropology and Psychology, National Research Council, Washington, D. C.

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made of the establishment of two annual prizes at Harvard University of $150 and $100 to be awarded to students in the college or graduate school of arts and sciences for the best thesis on subjects connected with the philosophy of William James. Provision for the award of these prizes during the next two years has been made by the gift of Edwin Det Bechtel, of New York City, one of Professor James's former students.

THE Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, University of Pittsburgh, has issued a list of the periodicals in the institutional library. According to this publication, which contains 287 entries, 214 journals are received current by the institute. Upon request, copies of this list will be sent gratis to chemical librarians and directors of research laboratories.

THE California Academy of Sciences recently sent supplies of top minnows (Gambusia affinis) to India, Philippine Islands and other places in the Far East, also to Papeete, Tahiti. The academy finds that these minnows multiply as rapidly under aquarium conditions in Golden Gate Park as they do in their native pools; the academy has therefore been able to supply from the Steinhardt Aquarium colonies of minnows to many parts of the world.

THE trustees of the Carnegie Fund, England, have promised £1,000 to the library fund of the British Optical Association, if its members succeed in raising a similar sum within two years.

An annual prize for surgery, which will be named after Dr. Archibald Young, professor of surgery at Glasgow University, has been instituted by the Lisbon Faculty of Medicine.

It is proposed to form, at an early date, an Irish Center of the Institute of Wireless Technology, with the objects of promoting the general advancement of radio technology and procuring the recognition of the status of the institute by the government, by public and local authorities and other bodies in the country.

THE Society of Neurology at Paris announces that the surplus left after the celebration of the Charcot centennial last June has been invested to endow a triennial prize of 4,000 francs. It is not open to com

petition. The society will select the beneficiary and give him a topic for research, clinical, anatomic or experimental, in the domain of neurology, on which he will report in three years at the latest.

Nature states that, by the will of the Right Hon. Stephen Ronan, lately Lord Justice of Appeals in Ireland, who died on October 3 last, and left personal estate in England and the Irish Free State valued for probate at £83,907, the Medical Research Council will receive considerable benefits. After private bequests amounting to nearly £9,000 and legacies to Irish charities, the residue is left to the Medical Research Council to be applied in assisting and promoting scientific research as the council may think best, "but without limiting their discretion, I would wish that special attention should be given to the relief, cure and prevention of physical pain by physical means."

[ocr errors]

THE Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on the place of the sciences in education held an open meeting in Kansas City during the last convocation week. The four papers constituting the program were published in School and Society for February 20. These papers were presented by Professors Caldwell, Livingston, Pupin and Dr. Slosson, and may be had in one pamphlet free by addressing the chairman of the committee on place of sciences in education, 425 West 123d St., New York City.

EVOLUTION will be an important topic at the twentyseventh summer session of Columbia University, which will begin on July 6 and end on August 13. In public lectures and in classroom and laboratory courses an attempt will be made to correct popular misconceptions of the theory of evolution. Public lectures will be given on July 15, 22 and 29, and on August 4. Professor Harlow Shapley, of Harvard University, will discuss "The Evolution of the Stars"; Professor Richard S. Lull, of Yale University, "The Evolution of the Earth"; Henry E. Crampton, of Columbia University, "The Evolution of Plants and Animals"; and Professor Edward L. Thorndike, of Columbia University, "The Evolution of Intelligence."

A CORRESPONDENT sends us the advertisement of a furniture company, of Jackson, Miss., which begins as follows: "No such varmint living as an infidel or evolutionist. Listen to their mournful cries when death stares them square in the face. We do not believe in such. But we do believe in high quality and low prices. A beautiful two-piece Overstuffed Upholstered in Mohair with reversible cushions for $185.00 on terms or 25 per cent. off for cash." AT the Washington meeting of the American Asso

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

ciation for the Advancement of Science, Section M (engineering) proposed a resolution which, on April 26, 1925, was adopted by the executive committee in the following form: "Resolved, that the American Association for the Advancement of Science heartily approves the establishment of a National Museum of Engineering and Industry, to be located in Washington." On October 25, 1925, the executive committee appointed the president of the association, Dr. Michael I. Pupin, as its representative on the board. The complete list of the board is given in the number of SCIENCE for February 12.

THE biological laboratories of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, located at Woods Hole, Mass., Beaufort, N. C., and Fairport, Iowa, will open on June 21, and are expected to remain in active operation until about September 15. A limited number of research rooms and tables will, as usual, be available to those qualified to conduct investigations in the various branches of marine and fresh-water biology. Owing to the increased demand for accommodations at the Woods Hole laboratory it has become necessary to make a more careful selection of those who will be granted the privileges of the laboratory, and preference will be given to those investigators who are working along lines of especial interest to the Bureau of Fisheries, and who have shown ability for energetic and productive research. The opportunities and facilities of Woods Hole and Beaufort are well known. At Fairport there is a new and well-equipped laboratory, with the necessary collecting apparatus, and ponds and tanks. Both river water and filtered water are provided. Those desiring to have the use of tables and other facilities at these laboratories may communicate with Henry O'Malley, Commissioner of Fisheries, Washington,

D. C.

IN the paper by Callie Hull and Clarence J. West on "Doctorates Conferred in the Sciences" printed in SCIENCE for December 25, the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts is credited with having given no doctorates in the sciences from 1916 to 1923, whereas it should have been stated that thirteen doctorates were conferred during this period. The table of doctorates conferred shows nine for the year 1924 and twelve for the year 1925. The correct figures are eleven and thirteen, respectively.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NOTES

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY has received from an anonymous donor the sum of $40,000 for research work in chemistry, to be known as the Wilbur Olin Atwater

Fund, in honor of the late Dr. Atwater, who was professor of chemistry at Wesleyan.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY has received a bequest of $25,000 for the use of the college of agriculture from the estate of the late Gustav Ulbricht, who died on February 19, 1924.

DR. HAROLD C. M. MORSE has been appointed assistant professor of mathematics at Harvard University.

EARL THORPE SCOTT, assistant plant pathologist of the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station, has been promoted to the rank of assistant professor of botany.

ROLAND M. CHASE has been appointed professor of civil engineering and mathematics at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, Fairbanks, Alaska.

J. AUSTIN BURROWS, of the chemistry department of Iowa State College, has been appointed assistant professor in inorganic chemistry at the University of North Dakota, University Station, Grand Forks, North Dakota.

PROFESSOR C. A. LOVATT EVANS has been appointed to the Jodrell chair of physiology at University College, London, to take the place of Dr. A. V. Hill, who recently resigned to take a Foulerton chair of the Royal Society, tenable at the college.

DR. RATHERY has been elected professor of experimental pathology, and Dr. Lemierre professor of bacteriology, in the Paris Faculty of Medicine.

PROFESSOR FILIPPO BOTTAZZI, director of the institute of physiology and biological chemistry, has been selected to succeed Professor Zambonini in the

rectorship of the University of Naples.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE BLACK CHAFF OF WHEAT IN RUSSIA

IN 1917 I described a bacterial disease of wheat from our middle west under the title: "A New Disease of Wheat" (Jour. Agr. Res. X, 51). That year I had fifteen persons at work upon it with three collectors in the field. The same year I contributed two notes to the mimeographed Plant Disease Bulletin (issued by the Plant Disease Survey, Bureau of Plant Industry, at intervals) in which I further described the disease, mapped its distribution and speculated on its origin. From its restricted distribution (states west of the Mississippi, where much Russian hard wheat had been introduced), from its very infectious nature (as indicated by its occurrence in many localities and by our very successful inoculation experi

« PreviousContinue »