THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
THE NEW YORK MEETING OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
THE National Academy of Sciences held its annual autumn meeting during the third week of November in the American Museum of Natural History. The central situation of New York City and its scientific attractions led to a large meeting and an excellent program There were present over sixty members, nearly one half of a membership widely scattered over the country. When the academy was established in 1863 as the adviser of the government in scientific questions, the membership was limited to fifty which was subsequently increased to 100, under which it was kept until recently. The present distribution of the 141 members among different institutions in which there are more than two is: Harvard, 19; Yale, 15; Chicago, 13; Johns Hopkins, 12; Columbia, 11; U. S. Geological Survey, 8; Carnegie Institution, 5; California, Rockefeller Institute, Smithsonian, 4; Clark, Wisconsin, Cornell, Stanford, 3.
The scientific program of the meeting began with a lecture by Professor Michael I. Pupin, of Columbia University, who described the work on aerial transmission of speech of which no authentic account has hitherto been made public. To Professor Pupin we owe the discovery through mathematical analysis and experimental work of the telephone relays which recently made speech by wire between New York City and San Francisco possible, and we now have an authoritative account of speaking across the land and sea a quarter way round the earth. One session of the academy was devoted to four papers of general interest. Professor Herbert S. Jennings, of the Johns Hopkins University, described experiments showing evolution in progress, and Professor John M. Coulter, of the University of Chicago, discussed the causes of evolution in plants Professor B. B. Boltwood made a report on the life of radium which may he regarded as a study of inorganic evolution. Professor Theodore Richards, of Harvard University, spoke of the investigations recently conducted in the Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory. These are in continuation of the work accomplished by Professor Richards in the determination of atomic weights, which led to the award to him of a Nobel prize, the third to be given for scientific work done in this country, the two previous awards having been to Professor Michelson, of the University of Chicago, in physics, and Dr. Carrel, of the Rockefeller Institute, in physiology.
Of more special papers, some of which, however, were of general and even popular interest, there were on the program 36, distributed somewhat unequally among the sections into which the academy is divided as follows: Mathematics, 0; Astronomy, 3; Physics and Engineering, 7; Chemistry, 1; Geology and Paleontology, 6; Botany, 7; Zoology and Animal Morphology, 8; Physiology and Pathology, 4; Anthropology and Psychology, 0. A program covering all the sciences belongs in a sense to the eighteenth rather than to the twentieth century; still there is human as well as scientific interest in listening to those who are leaders in the conduct of scientific work.
The academy was fortunate in meeting in the American Museum of Natural History, where in addition to the scientific sessions luncheon and an evening reception were provided. The museum has assumed leadership both in exhibits for the public and in the scientific research which it is accomplishing. The planning of museum exhibits is itself a kind of research and in this direction the American Museum, together with the National Museum in Washington and the Field Museum in Chicago, now surpasses any of the museums of the old world and in the course of the next ten years will have no rivals there. It is interesting that the city and an incorporated board of trustees are able to cooperate in the support of the museum, as is also the case with the Zoological Park and the Botanical Gardens which the members of the academy visited in the course of the meeting.