PRESIDENT HARDING, PROFESSOR AND MRS. EINSTEIN AND MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT THE WHITE HOUSE of Sciences. The academy rejoices to bring its tribute of homage to the brilliant and penetrating mind which has so greatly enriched the philosophy of ultimate truth. We congratulate you on the universal appreciation of your investigations which has outrun and overleaped the limitations and barriers associated with nationalities and with the times. To men everywhere your name, in association with the abstruse subject of your investigations, has become a household word. We welcome you to our scientific meetings and especially to the social hours which intervene, during which the members of the academy hope to have the pleasure of meeting and learning to know you as a friend. In reply Professor Einstein in substance said: It gives me great pleasure to meet here so considerable a part of the scientific investigators of America and to become personally acquainted with them. I thank you for your friendly invitation and for the very hearty reception which has been accorded me. The appreciation of my scientific work, which has just been expressed, embarrasses me. When a man after long years of searching chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sutficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding. In science, moreover, the work of the individual is so bound up with that of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries that it appears almost as an impersonal product of his generation. The fact of this close spiritual association leads me to the last point that I have upon my heart to say. Our perturbed time has through the action of political misfortune partly impaired that community of labor that is so important for science. I should like to express the hope that the field of activity of scientific men may be reunited and that the whole world will soon again be bound together by common work. ELECTIONS BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES At the business session of the academy the president, Dr. Charles D. Walcott, presented his resignation, but at the earnest request of the academy, he consented to serve the remaining two years of his term. The resignation of the foreign secretary, Dr. George E. Hale, was accepted with regret, and with the expression of high appreciation of his able work in that office. Dr. R. A. Millikan was elected foreign secretary, to complete the unexpired term of Dr. Hale. Dr. Hale was elected a member of the council, and Dr. Raymond Pearl was reelected. The following were elected to membership: Frank Michler Chapman, American Museum of Natural History. William LeRoy Emmet, General Electric Company, Schenectady, N. Y. William Draper Harkins, University of Chicago. Ales Hrdlicka, United States National Museum. Arthur Edwin Kennelly, Harvard University. William George MacCallum, Johns Hopkins University. Dayton Clarence Miller, Case School of Applied Science. George Abram Miller, University of Illinois. Benjamin Lincoln Robinson, Harvard University. Vesto Melvin Slipher, Lowell Observatory. Lewis Buckley Stillwell, 100 Broadway, New York. Thomas Wayland Vaughan, United States Geological Survey. Donald Dexter Van Slyke, Rockefeller Institute. Henry Stephens Washington, Geophysical Laboratory. Robert Sessions Woodworth, Columbia University. Foreign Associates William Bateson, John Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton Park, Surrey, England. C. Eijkman, University of Utrecht, Holland. MME. CURIE'S VISIT TO AMERICA Mme. Marie Sklodowska Curie, accompanied by her two daughters, is spending five weeks in the United States. Representing France and Poland, the high intellectual achievement of women, and at the same time science which transcends the limits of nationality and of sex, she has received a welcome commensurate with her services and her distinction. view of the widespread accounts of her work and of the honors conferred upon her, it is only necessary here to join in the universal expression of welcome and of admiration. In In her first address, which was made to the students of Vassar College, Mme. Curie expressed the value of research in pure science to the general welfare, the recognition of which will be greatly forwarded by the universal interest taken in her visit: She said: We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of its direct usefulness. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become, like radium, a benefit for humanity. But science is not rich; it does not generally meet recognition before the material usefulness of it has been proved. The factories produce many grams of radium every year, but the laboratories have very small quantities. That is true of my laboratory, and that is why I am very grateful to the American women who wish me to have more radium and are giving me the opportunity to go on with my work. SCIENTIFIC ITEMS WE record with regret the death of Henry Platt Cushing, professor of geology in Western Reserve University; of George Frederick Wright, the geologist, professor emeritus of the harmony of science and religion at Oberlin College, and of Al 581 bert Cable Hale, formerly secretary of the American Chemical Society. AT the recent meeting of the American Chemical Society at Rochester, Professor Charles F. Chandler and Dr. William H. Nichols were elected honorary members of the society. THE American Philosophical Society has elected members as follows: Herman V. Ames, Philadelphia; George David Birkhoff, Cambridge; John J. Carty, Short Hills, N. J.; Frank M. Chapman, New York; Henry Crew, Evanston, Ill.; Benjamin M. Duggar, St. Louis; John Marshall Gest, Philadelphia; Charles Homer Haskins, Cambridge; Lawrence J. Henderson, Cambridge; J. Bertram Lippincott, Philadelphia; Hideyo Noguchi, New York; Thomas B. Osborne, New Haven; Charles J. Vesto M. Rhodes, Philadelphia; Flagstaff, Slipher, David White, Washington. Ariz.; THE trustees of the estate of the late John W. Sterling, to whom the residue of the estate was left in the interest of Yale University, have established two additional Sterling professorships at Yale; one of these is to be assigned for the present to mathematics, one to physiological chemistry. Professor Ernest W. Brown, of the department of mathematics, has been assigned to one of these professorships, and Professor Lafayette B. Mendel, professor of physiological chemistry, has been assigned to the other. Four Sterling professorships. have now been established, the other two being the new professorship of education recently filled by the appointment of Frank E. Spaulding, formerly superintendent of public schools in Cleveland, Ohio, and the new professorship of chemistry recently filled by the appointment of Professor John Johnston, formerly secretary of the National Research Council. Each of these professorships has an endowment of about $225,000. |