It is satisfactory that the Secretary of the Treasury should recommend a reasonable salary for the director of the proposed bureau. Men of science are, as a rule, but poorly paid, and the officers in the scientific departments of the Government receive in many cases salaries that are a small part of what they could earn as physicians or lawyers. There is, of course, danger that if salaries are large, the offices will be sought by ‘practical’ politicians, and it is probably the part of wisdom to offer the best facilities for research rather than large salaries. Still, if the scientific man has the salary of a clerk, he will be ranked in the same class by legislators and executive officers. The small salaries offered at Washington also lead to the continual loss of those whose services are of the greatest value to the Government. Thus, the recent call to the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, is a serious blow to the bureau and to science at Washington. Dr. Pritchett’s scientific attainments and executive ability will find ample scope at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worthily succeeds Presidents Rogers, Runkle, Walker and Crafts. But he was also greatly needed in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, where, after the excellent administration of Dr. T. C. Mendenhall, there had been an unfortunate interregnum of three years. During the past three years, however, the work of the Survey has been placed on an excellent basis by Dr. Pritchett, and there is every reason to believe that the ground gained will not be lost.
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The transition of Dr. Pritchett from the professorship of mathematics and astronomy in Washington University to the superintendency of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and now to the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute, calls attention to the fact that the only promotion possible to men of science or university professors is an executive position. The type of the German Gelehrte, still current in literature and on the stage, is not common in America. The modern methods of advancing science—the laboratory, the observatory, the museum, the expedition, with their complex equipment—demand administrative ability of a high order. Science has been able to supply presidents, not only to the great technical schools, but also to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and other universities. Still, it is unfortunate that the man of science can not look forward to promotion in the direction of his own work. He becomes a college professor or the like at a comparatively early age with a moderate salary. He has now as a motive the increase of his reputation, rather likely to degenerate into vanity, and the nobler motive of contributing to the advance of science and of civilization. But these motives appeal differently to different men—in any case, they bake no bread and educate no children. The average salary of scientific men can not be greatly increased; there must be a certain relation between supply and demand, and the average earnings of other professional men are also small. But the lawyer may look forward to becoming a judge, the physician to a large city practice, the clergyman to a bishopric, etc. In Germany a university professor may look forward to being called to Berlin, to becoming a Hofrat, a Geheimrat and a ‘von.’ It seems that we need in each American university one or two chairs with very large endowments, the occupation of which would be a special honor.
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The French Academy of Sciences and French Science have lost two of their most distinguished representatives in the deaths of Joseph Bertrand and of Alphonse Milne-Edwards. Bertrand was born in 1823, and was somewhat of a prodigy when a boy, having published a paper on the theory of electricity when but sixteen years old, and being the author of numerous mathematical papers before he was twenty-one. His original contributions to mathematics and mathematical physics are of great importance, and he was the author of standard works on algebra, on arithmetic and on the calculus. As permanent secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences he was continually engaged in administrative work, preparing obituary notices, acting as judge in the annual awards of its prizes, etc. He also contributed a large number of biographies and other articles to non-technical journals. Milne-Edwards, born in 1835, was a son of the eminent zoölogist, Henri Milne-Edwards, and the grandson of Bryan Edwards, the historian and member of the British Parliament. Milne-Edwards published important researches in paleontology and in zoölogy, especially in relation to birds, and was at the time of his death professor of zoölogy at Paris and director of the Jardin des Plantes.
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In the deaths of the Duke of Argyll and Prof. St. George Mivart, Great Britain loses two men of a type more common there than in the United States. Argyll was a man of great wealth, whose interests in science were only secondary, but who did much directly and indirectly for its advancement. His work, ‘The Reign of Law,’ published some twenty-five years ago, has been widely read, and he is the author of many books and articles concerned with the natural sciences. Mivart, although trained as a barrister, became perhaps a professional man of science, but he never occupied a regular university position. He published numerous contributions to comparative anatomy and zoölogy, but is perhaps best known for books and articles on general scientific subjects. Just before his death, it will be remembered, he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church owing to articles which were supposed not to be in conformity with its tenets. Both Argyll and Mivart represented an attitude towards the doctrine of evolution which may be regarded as now practically extinct.
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Two lectures have been recently delivered by Prof. James Dewar at the Royal Institution on the subject of liquid and solid hydrogen. These lectures have been illustrated by experiments and have attracted the attention of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of England. It is easy to understand such interest in the subject when we consider that even Clerk Maxwell thought it improbable that hydrogen would ever be liquified, and yet Dewar was able to exhibit not only liquid, but solid, hydrogen to his audience. Briefly recapitulated, the steps in the condensation of what were formerly called the permanent gases are these: in 1878 Cailletet, in Paris, and Pictet, at Geneva, by suddenly expanding gases which had been compressed to a high degree and cooled to a low temperature, succeeded in obtaining these gases in the shape of a mist or of a transitory liquid jet. In 1884 Wroblewski and Olszewski at Crakow obtained oxygen and nitrogen as static liquids. By expanding hydrogen from a compression of 190 atmospheres in a vessel cooled by liquid air evaporating under diminished pressure, this gas was obtained as a mist or momentary froth, though it was affirmed by Olszewski that he observed the liquid hydrogen in colorless drops and as a liquid running down the sides of the tube. In May, 1898, Dewar obtained hydrogen as a static liquid by allowing compressed hydrogen, cooled in a bath of boiling air, to escape rapidly at a jet, the liquid hydrogen being collected in a doubly isolated vacuum vessel. This liquid hydrogen is a colorless liquid, with a specific gravity of 0.07 or less than one sixth the weight of liquid marsh gas, the lightest liquid hitherto known. This is better realized by saying that while one gram of water has the volume of one cubic centimeter, one gram of liquid hydrogen has a volume of over 14 c. c. The boiling point of hydrogen is -252° C. or 21° above the absolute zero, and by boiling in a vacuum the temperature of 15° can be obtained. Very recently by slowly evaporating very perfectly isolated liquid hydrogen, solid hydrogen was obtained by Dewar as a white mass of solidified form, of the lowest temperature ever obtained, -258° C.
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