of matter.

With radium and with uranium

we do not see anything but the decay. And yet somewhere, somehow, it is almost certain that these elements must be continually forming.

It

They are probably being put together now somewhere in the laboratories of the stars. That is still something of a guess, it is true, and yet the spectra of the nebulæ show that they contain only the lighter elements. Can we ever learn to control the process? Why not? Only research can tell. What is it worth to try it? A million dollars? A hundred million? A billion? would be worth that much if it failed, for you could count on more than that amount in by-products. And if it succeeded-a new world for man! But what have we got already through the discovery of radio-activity? An immensely stimulating new conception of the universe and of the way matter is behaving.

Next the significance of radium with respect to the question of the availability of energy. The amount of heat given off from one gram of radium in disintegrating into lead is 300,000 times as much as the amount of heat given off in the burning of one gram of coal. There is, then, in the radium a supply of sub-atomic energy, and this raises the question as to whether such energy exists locked up in other atoms and as to whether there is any possible way we can get at it? Do not be too sanguine about it as far as radium is concerned, because if all the radium at present in the world were set to work, although it is 300,000 times as potent as coal per gram in giving off energy, it would not suffice to keep the corner popcorn man's outfit going. It does not exist in sufficient quantity.

But what has its discovery done then in the field of energy? It has opened our eyes to the fact that certain kinds of matter certainly possess these stores of energy and it is almost a foregone conclusion that similar stores are also possessed by the atoms which we have not yet found to be changing-which are not radio-active. The astronomer has for years been completely puzzled to account for enormous amounts of energy which the sun and

stars emit. He has not been able to find its source. It is impossible that the sun is simply a hot body cooling off, because we have evidence that it has lived longer than it could have lived if that were the case. The astronomer has now, however, seized upon the facts of radio-activity and surmises that these sub-atomic energies may be the source of the sun's radiation. If so the supplies are not so limited as we thought.

Look now at another side of this same problem. I am thinking particularly of the work of Professor Joly and Lord Rayleigh, who have made measurements of the amount of radio-activity of the ordinary surface rocks. Professor Joly has computed that if there are two parts of radio-active material for every million million parts of other matter throughout the whole volume of the earth, and this is considerably less than he has found on the average in the earth's crust, then this earth, instead of cooling off, is actually now heating up; so that in a hundred million years the temperature of its core will have risen through 1,800 degrees centigrade. That is a temperature which will melt almost all of our ordinary substances. What does it mean? It means that the life history of our planet is perhaps not at all what we have heretofore thought that it was. It means that a planet that seems to be dead, as this our earth seems to be, may, a few eons hence, be a luminous body, and that it may go through periods of expansion when it radiates enormously, and then of contraction when it becomes like our present earth, a body which is a heat insulator and holds in its interior the energy given off by radio-active processes, until another period of luminosity ensues. What I am now pointing out is the growth in our conception of the world, the growth in the thoughts of men that has come out from these studies. Do not think that this is not of importance. When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter he was doing just about as useless a thing from the standpoint of its immediate applicability to human relations as he could have found to do. And yet what did he actually accomplish? He started off the train of

thought, the mode of attack upon physical problems which has made this industrial age what it is, and therein lies the tremendous significance of a discovery of the kind which we are honoring to-night.

We are so close to this age in which we live that we do not see what it means; we do not see it in its relation to other centuries. And therefore I should like to take you up in an Einstein airplane that violates all the relations of space and time so that you may see with me a few spots in geography and in time. Suppose we sail first, in the present, to the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates and see a picture which Professor Breasted drew to my attention when he came back from a recent mission to the near east. He pictured the inhabitants of that region tilling the ground with a crooked stick, bringing their hardearned produce to the shores of the river, putting it on crude rafts which were made from the skins of goats and sheep, and paddling it laboriously across to the other side. Then he threw on the screen a photograph of an ancient Babylonian tablet which showed the inhabitants of that region four thousand years ago doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. Four thousand years without a bit of progress-each generation simply following the last in living a miserable existence, reproducing its kind and then passing on. Leave that! It is a discouraging picture.

Fly over into India and see this! I heard last winter Mr. Sam Higinbotham describe the conditions prevailing in that land now, where, as he said, millions of men go out into the fields in the morning with only a handful of grain-all they have to eat for the day; work a long day in perpetual hunger and feel that they would be perfectly happy if they could get all they wanted of such raw grain to eat. What wonder that Heaven for these men is Nirvana-the escape from existence!

Now fly over China. To do so, you have only to look at the sign in front of this mu

country and perhaps the following sights may suggest an answer. Circle above the Mississippi near New Orleans, and contrast what you see with the picture on the banks of the Tigris. See a train on the Southern Pacific Road bearing five hundred tons of produce from Texas, pulled upon a great ferry without even uncoupling the engine. See it in fifteen minutes on the other side ready to distribute its huge load of food stuffs raised with the aid of automatic planters, tractor-plows and steam threshers on the broad plains of the west, to the millions of inhabitants in the eastern half of our country. Or, again, fly over the biggest copper mine in the world which is near Salt Lake City and look at a mountain of two per cent. copper being shoveled away by great steam shovels with comparatively little human labor. See forty thousand tons a day of ore pulled in huge hundred-ton cars a few miles to the mill. Then see one of those huge cars elevated, wheels and all with no apparent human assistance, sixty feet high, turned slowly over and made to dump its load of ore into the mighty mill where a great, senseless, iron Cyclops grinds it into powder. Then watch the unseen natural forces of cohesion and adhesion in the flotation process pick out the ore from the gangue, without human aid, though controlled by human brains, and thus produce from sources altogether unusable fifteen years ago, the cheapest copper which the world has ever seen, the copper with which you are now harnessing new water power and building new electric railroads across the continent, with which famine is made an impossibility in any part of these United States.

Now, what is the most essential and most significant element of difference betweeen the two pictures which you have seen, the one here, the other half way around the earth? In this country, where the giant forces of nature have been set at work, the cheapest paid laborer on a building or in a steel plant, or on a farm, got before the war for eight or nine hours of labor, and he gets now, more than twenty times as much, not merely in money but in actual goods to be purchased with his

money, as does that man in India or in China. In other words, the common, unskilled laboring man in America has more than twenty slaves, but they are senseless, iron slaves, each of the same effectiveness as a common Indian laborer, who are doing his work for him. Why? Because Galileo and a few men like him a few hundred years ago got the idea that it was important to study out how nature worked. It is that study which has resulted in this modern scientific and industrial age. And it is only in the regions of the earth where that idea has got started, namely, in Western Europe and in this country, where the conditions under which the average man lives and works have been thus alleviated. Note that I say "have been " not "are to be." True, they may be immensely more improved than they are now. I can see little, immediate, practical needs as well as you. But let us not yet alight from our airplane. When you look at what has already be done by the advance of modern science-by getting an idea into a few men's minds-you begin to see that, after all, the important thing in this world is not the immediately practicable; the important thing is the growth of the human mind, the development of a few big ideas. Other things come from that, and therein lies the far-reaching significance of the experiments with radium; they have opened our eyes to new possibilities; they have given us a new conception of the growth and decay of the elements, and of the possibility of the human control of these processes; they have revealed the existence of new sources of energy which some time we may hope to be able to tap, and with the aid of which we may perhaps enrich human life in as yet undreamed of measure.

The first step is to see whether it is possible by any means at our control, to disintegrate atoms. And we have already found that we can do it, and radium has helped us to make that discovery. But we have only begun on this type of work. Its possibilities are untold.

From my point of view there are two things

of immense importance in this world, two ideas or beliefs upon which, in the last analysis, the weal or woe of the race depends, and I am not going to say that belief in the possibilities of scientific progress is the most important. The most important thing in the world is a belief in the reality of moral and spiritual values. It was because we lost that belief that the world war came, and if we do not now find a way to regain and to strengthen that belief, then science is of no value. But, on the other hand, it is also true that even with that belief there is little hope of progress except through its twin sister, only second in importance, namely, belief in the spirit and the method of Galileo, of Newton, of Faraday, and of the other great builders of this modern scientific age-this age of the understanding and the control of nature, upon which let us hope we are just entering. For while a starving man may indeed be supremely happy, it is certain that he can not be happy very long. So long as man is a physical being, his spiritual and his physical well-being can not be disentangled. No efforts toward social readjustments or toward the redistribution of wealth have one thousandth as large a chance of contributing to human well-being as have the efforts of the physicist, the chemist, and the biologist toward the better understanding and the better control of nature.

Finally, the most significant thing about this evening is the way in which this contribution to further progress has been made: Not through a public grant-that is not the method through which the genius of AngloSaxon civilization has ever expressed itself, but rather through private initiative. A large group of public-spirited people have, of their own free will, decided that they wished to have a part in the development of a new chain of scientific discovery. It is that spirit and that method which has made America what it is, and it is in the spread of that sort of intelligence among one hundred million people that our future lies.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

R. A. MILLIKAN

LINCOLN WARE RIDDLE

THE following minute on the life and services of Professor Riddle was placed upon the records of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University at the meeting of June 7, 1921:

Lincoln Ware Riddle was born in Jamaica Plain, Mass., October 17, 1880. He graduated from Harvard in 1902, received the degree of A.M. in 1905, and of Ph.D. in 1906. In the same year he became instructor in botany at Wellesley College. He was appointed professor of botany there in 1917 and held this position for two years, when he came to Harvard as assistant professor of cryptogamic botany and associate curator of the cryptogamic herbarium. At the close of his first year of service upon our faculty he was attacked by the prolonged illness which terminated fatally on the 16th of last January.

The rare enthusiasm and singular devotion which he brought to his work were early made manifest. As a boy of twelve, at the Roxbury Latin School, he declared his purpose to devote his life to botany, and henceforth gave himself unreservedly to its pursuit.

At Wellesley he became deeply interested in lichens, and devoted himself more and more to the study of these plants. He made good use of the important lichen herbarium at Wellesley, and of the unique collection at Harvard, and in 1913, during a year's leave of absence in Europe, studied the collections in Upsala, Helsingfors, Geneva, London and Paris. His publications soon made him a leading authority on the subject.

He was constantly handicapped by a frail physique, but this did not prevent him from accomplishing important scientific work or from taking an active part in the affairs of the community. In his relations with his fellows he was the soul of honor and loyalty, with a personality that drew all men to him. In the class-room his sympathy and friendliness, as well as his clarity of style, made his teaching attractive. His devotion to his students was noteworthy and his influence great and lasting.

In the circle which mourns him his careful scholarship was widely esteemed by his professional associates; he was honored by all for his inspiring ideals, and, beyond the lot of most men, he was sincerely beloved.

WINTHROP J. V. OSTERHOUT,
ROLAND THAXTER,
MERRITT L. FERNALD,

Committee

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

THE PRINTERS' STRIKE AND SCIENCE It is perhaps desirable to state that, owing to the strike of compositors for a forty-four hour week, the printers of SCIENCE continue to bring out the journal under serious difficulties. They have, for example, been unable to page the number of The American Naturalist, which should have appeared on May 1 and was in type at that time. Owing to the weekly publication of SCIENCE, it has been given precedence, the composition and makeup of the number having been largely done by the heads of departments. It has, however, been necessary to reduce the size of the numbers and to limit the amount of composition as closely as possible. Nearly all advertisers have cooperated with the publication department in using copy already in type and limiting as far as possible new composition. It may again be noted that the strike is nation-wide, affecting, in the east at least, the printing of most scientific journals.

GRANT FOR THE STUDY OF STELLAR
PARALLAXES 1

THE Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has quite recently granted an application made to it to assist in carrying out a piece of research work relating to the determination of the parallaxes of stars having a certain type of spectrum. The grant has been made to Mr. W. B. Rimmer, who up to the present has been employed in spectroscopic researches at the Imperial College of Science and Technology under the direction of Professor A. Fowler, but will now carry out this research at the Norman Bockyer Observatory at Salcombe Hill, Sidmouth. This observatory was founded by the late Sir Norman Lockyer in 1912, and the programme of work has been confined strictly to the photography of the spectra of stars and their subsequent classification according to his scheme of increasing and decreasing temperatures, which has been confirmed in its general features by the more recent work of Russell and Hertzsprung on giant and dwarf stars. The researches of Professor W. S. Adams have now 1 From Nature.

rendered it possible to differentiate almost at a glance between a giant and a dwarf star. As a large amount of spectroscopic material was available at the Norman Lockyer Observatory for the application of Adams's method a trial research was begun. The method is based on a connection found by Adams to exist between the true brightness of a star and the intensity of certain lines in its spectrum. These line-intensities were determined by him by estimation, the plates being examined under a spectro-comparator. At the Norman Lockyer Observatory the method employed is to cover the lines gradually with a dark wedge, the position of which when a line is obliterated indicates the intensity of the line. The results of this trial research have proved very satisfactory, and were commented upon very favorably by Professor H. N. Russell on the occasion of a visit to the observatory. The above grant has been awarded to aid the extension of this research to all stars of suitable type down to declination 10° and of magnitude 6.5 and brighter. It is very opportune, for the staff of the observatory is small, and the work could not have been undertaken without such additional help.

HONORARY DEGREES CONFERRED BY YALE

UNIVERSITY

AT the commencement exercises on June 22 honorary degrees were conferred on several men of science. In presenting them Professor Phelps spoke as follows:

Master of Arts

ISAIAH BOWMAN: formerly assistant professor of geography at Yale. Director of the American Geographical Society and editor of its Bulletin. He has led geological and geographical expeditions in South America. In 1917 he received the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society in Paris. He was the executive head of the house inquiry, being chosen for proved fitness. He did valuable work on boundaries for the Peace Commission in Paris. He is one more illustration of a college professor becoming so generally useful that the college is unable to keep him.

Doctors of Science

HIDEYO NOGUCHI: distinguished Japanese scholar, M.D., Tokyo, 1897. He has made important discoveries in the treatment and prevention of smallpox and yellow fever. He is an honorary professor of three universities in South America; he has been given the Order of Merit by the Emperor of Japan. He is a striking fulfillment of the Scripture prophecy-"Seest thou a man diligent in business? He shall stand before kings." Dr. Noguchi has received the order. of knighthood from three Kings-the Kings of Spain, Denmark and. Sweden. Perhaps he appreciates even more than royal honors the admiration and gratitude of the people.

MADAME MARIE CURIE: Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw and has always been a scientist; her father was a distinguished professor and her husband, Pierre Curie, will never be forgotten. She was educated at Warsaw and at Paris, and has been professor of radiology at Paris. It is superfluous to mention her discoveries in science, and now she has discovered America. She has often encountered dangers in scientific experiments, but nothing so dangerous as American hospitality; it is to be hoped she will not be a woman killed with kindness. She is unique. There is only one thing rarer than genius, and that is radium. She illustrates the combination of both.

Doctor of Laws

SIR ROBERT JONES: the leading British orthopædist. One of the many distinguished men contributed to the world by Wales. Lecturer on orthopedic surgery at the University of Liverpool; member of many learned societies, author of many books, recipient of many degrees to which number Yale is proud to add one more. Enormously useful during the war. He had charge of the orthopaedic work of the British government 19141918. It is largely owing to him that England maintained during the war a position so characteristically upright.

JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL: president-elect of Yale. Born in Vermont, a graduate of the University of Michigan. Professor and acting president of the University of Chicago. Exchange professor at the Sorbonne. At home anywhere and everywhere. Son of a great college president and ideally prepared to be one himself. Trained in scholarly research and in executive duties. A teacher of exceptional power. He has a thorough understanding of America's needs in higher edu