SCIENTIFIC EVENTS THE BONAPARTE AND LOUTREUIL FOUNDATIONS OF THE PARIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WE learn from Nature that of the 72,500 francs placed at the disposal of the Academy by Prince Bonaparte, it proposed to allocate 30,000 francs as follows: Five thousand francs to Charles Alluaud, traveling naturalist to the National Natural History Museum, for a geological and botanical expedition in the Moroccan Grand Atlas Chain. Two thousand francs to A. Boutaric, for the construction of an apparatus for recording nocturnal radiation. One thousand francs to Emile Brumpt, for continuing his work on parasitic hæmoglobinuria or piroplasmos of cattle. Three thousand francs to E. Fauré-Fremiet, for undertaking a series of studies on histogenesis and certain surgical applications. Three thousand francs to A. Guilliermond, for pursuing his researches on lower organisms and on mitochondria. Three thousand francs to Joseph Martinet, for continuing his researches on the isatins capable of serving as raw material for the synthesis of indigo coloring matters. Three thousand francs to A. Vavssières, for the continuation of his researches of the marine molluses, family Cypræida. Ten thousand francs to the Fédération française des Sociétés de Sciences naturelles, for the publication of a fauna of France. The committee appointed to allocate the Loutreuil foundations recommended the following grants: 1. To establishments named by the founder: Ten thousand francs to the National Museum of Natural History, for the reorganization of its library. Seven thousand five hundred francs to the Paris Observatory, at the request of the Central Council of the Observatories, for purchasing an instrument. 2. Grants applied for direct: Six thousand francs to the Société Géologique du Nord, to enable it to take up work interrupted by the war. Ten thousand francs to l'Ecole des hautes études industrielles et commerciales ed Lille, for restoring the material of its chemical laboratory. Twenty thousand francs to the Observatory of Ksara (near Beyrout). This laboratory was prac tically destroyed by the Turks and Germans. The grant is towards its restoration. Eight thousand francs to Henri Deslandres, for the study of the radical movements of the solar vapors and the thickness of the gaseous atmosphere of the sun. Seven thousand five hundred francs to Maurice Hamy, to carry out certain improvements in astronomical apparatus of precision. Three thousand five hundred francs to Félix Boquet, for the publication of Kepler tables. One thousand francs to G. Raymond, for the continuation of his actinometric experiments. Ten thousand francs to Charles Marie, for exceptional expense connected with the publication of the Tables annuelles de constants et données numériques de chimie, de physique et de technologie." Ten thousand francs to the Fédération française des Sociétés de Sciences naturelles, for the publication of a French fauna. Two thousand francs to P. Lesne, for his researches on the insects of peat-bogs. Two thousand francs to A. Paillot, for his researches on the microbial diseases of insects. Two thousand francs to Just Aumiot, for the methodical study of the varieties of potato. Five thousand francs to Albert Peyron and Gabriel Petit, for the experimental study of cancer in the larger mammals. Three thousand francs to Th. Nogier, for completing the installation of the radio-physiological laboratory of the Bacteriological Institute of Lyons. AWARD OF THE NOBEL PRIZE TO PROFESSOR HABER By order of the minister from Sweden the first secretary of the legation has made public the following statement correcting certain remarks that have appeared in the daily press concerning the award by the Swedish Academy of Science of a Nobel Prize for chemistry to Professor Fritz Haber of BerlinDahlen. 1. The invention for which the prize was awarded to Professor Haber was the synthesis of ammonia by direct way out of its constituent elements. 2. The report on which the award was made stated that the Haber method of producing ammonia is cheaper than any other so far known, that the production of cheap nitric fertilizers is of a universal importance to the increase of food production, and that consequently the Haber invention was of the greatest value to the world at large. 3. The Haber method was invented and published several years before the outbreak of the great war. At the International Congress for Applied Chemistry held in the United States in 1912, it was described by Professor Bernthsen. The method was consequently known to all nations before the war and available to them to the same extent. It seems to have been put into practise in the United States. 4. Ammonia, the product of the Haber method, must be converted into nitric acid in order to give rise to explosives or to corrosive gases. As a matter of fact, the Haber plants in Germany were erected with a view to producing agricultural fertilizers. 5. As far as I know, no gas masks have ever been manufactured in Sweden. In all events, there existed in Sweden during the whole war an export prohibition on all sorts of war material. That prohibition has been rigorously upheld. 6. The Nobel Prizes are paid in one single post and not in monthly installments. DYE SECTION OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY THE second meeting of the Dye Section will be held in St. Louis, beginning Wednesday, April 14. At this meeting the committee on permanent organization will submit "By-Laws" for the consideration of the Section, the approval of which by the Section and by the Council, will be the necessary steps to the permanent organization of the Dye Chemists of the United States, as the Dye Division of the American Chemical Society. The secretary asks all scientific workers in the field of dyes to present the results of their researches and experiences at these meetings of the dye chemists. Papers on the manufacture, properties or application of dyes, both of coal tar or natural origin, will be of timely SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT EDWIN PEARY, retired, the distinguished arctic explorer, died at his home in Washington, on February 20, from pernicious anemia, aged sixty-three years. PROFESSOR E. G. CONKLIN, of Princeton University, and Professor T. H. Morgan, of Columbia University, have been elected honorary members of the Belgian Society of Zoology and Malacology. DR. JOHN R. SWANTON, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and Dr. Truman Michelson, of the Bureau of American Ethnology and professor in George Washington University, have been elected corresponding members of the Société des Américanistes de Paris. THE Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for December contains a record by Dr. Thomas S. Cullen, of the work and writings of Dr. Henry Mills Hurd, Baltimore, who was the first superintendent of the hospital. DR. JAMES HARRIS ROGERS, of Hyattsville, Maryland, has received from the Maryland Academy of Sciences, Baltimore, its inventor's medal for his work on "underground and sub-sea wireless." Ir is stated in Nature that the council of the Glass Research Association has appointed Mr. R. L. Frink, Lancaster, Ohio, director of research. The secretary of the association says: "Mr. Frink has a lifelong experience of the American glass trade and glass research, is well known to the foremost English glass manufacturers, and his appointment is welcomed by the British glass industry." PROFESSOR FRANK G. HAUGHWOUT has been placed in charge of the work and investigation in protozoology and parasitology in the Bureau of Science, Manila. He has resigned his chair in the University of the Philippines, but will continue to lecture to the medical students. MESSRS. C. G. Derick, William Hoskins, F. A. Lidbury, A. D. Little, Charles L. Reese, and C. P. Townsend, have been appointed associate editors with Dr. John Johnston, editor of the Technological Monographs of the American Chemical Society. Messrs. G. N. Lewis, L. B. Mendel, Julius Stieglitz and A. A. Noyes, have been appointed associate editors with A. A. Noyes, editor of the Scientific Monographs of the society. PROFESSOR H. A. CURTIS, who has held the chair of organic chemistry at Northwestern University, has resigned to enter industrial work. MR. R. K. BRODIE has been transferred from the position of industrial fellow at the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to the chemical department of the chemical division of Proctor and Gamble Company, Ivorydale, Ohio. DR. GEORGE HEYL has become vice-president and technical director of the Heyl Laboratories, Inc., New York City. THE directors of the Fenger Memorial Association have awarded Dr. Harry Culver a grant to aid in the study of certain urinary infections. DR. EDWIN DELLER, secretary of the Brown Animal Sanatory Institution, University of London, has been appointed assistant secretary to the Royal Society to succeed Mr. R. W. F. Harrison, who, owing to the state of his health, has resigned the office, which he has held for twenty-four years. THE following awards have been made by the council of the British Institution of Mining and Metallurgy: (1) Gold medal of the institution to Mr. H. Livingstone Sulman, in recognition of his contributions to metal lurgical science, with special reference to his work in the development of flotation and its application to the recovery of minerals. (2) "The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Ltd." gold medal to Mr. William Henry Goodchild, for his papers on "The Economic Geology of the Insizwa Range" and "The Genesis of Igneous Ore Deposits." (3) "The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Ltd." premium of forty guineas to Dr. Edward Thomas Mellor, for his paper on "The Conglomerates of the Witwatersrand." AT a recent meeting of the advisory committee of the American Chemical Society it was voted to recommend to the Board of Directors that a sum not to exceed $1,000 for traveling expenses be placed at the disposal of Professor W. A. Noyes, the president of the society, for the year 1920, for the purpose of visiting local sections of the society, such trips to be made by arrangement with the president but only on condition that the section or sections visited pay one half such expenses. It was suggested that local sections so far as possible arrange with the president or among themselves for joint meetings or continuous routing. IT is noted in Nature that December 31, marked the bicentenary of the death of John Flamsteed, first astronomer royal of England, and the rector of the parish of Burstow, Surrey, where he is buried. Flamsteed was born four years after Newton. Though prevented by illness from attending a university, he was devoted to mathematical studies, and in 1671 sent a paper to the Royal Society. Three years later he published his "Ephemerides," a copy of which, being presented to Charles II. by Sir Jonas Moore, led to Flamsteed being appointed on March 4, 1675, "our astronomical observer" at a salary of £100 per annum, his duty being "forthwith to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying the tables of the motions of the heavens and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation." The observatory at Greenwich, constructed partly of brick from old Tilbury Fort and of timber and lead from the Tower of London, was designed by Wren and built at a cost of £520, the money being derived from the sale of spoilt gunpowder. A RESEARCH MEDICAL SOCIETY was organized recently at the Loyola University School of Medicine. The following officers were elected for the academic year 1919-20: President, R. M. Strong; Vice-president, F. M. Phifer; Secretary, A. B. Dawson; Treasurer, E. S. Maxwell; Members of the council, S. A. Matthews, George W. Wilson, and F. B. Lusk. PROFESSOR FREDERIC S. LEE, of Columbia University, lectured recently on "Problems of industrial physiology" before the Royal Canadian Institute, Toronto, and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. PROFESSOR H. N. HOLMES, head of the chemistry department in Oberlin College, has recently lectured at Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, and before the Cincinnati section of the American Chemical Society on "The industrial applications of colloid chemistry." AN address on the "Theories regarding the formation of phosphate deposits" was given at the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station on February 16, by Dr. Walter H. Bucher, of the department of geology of the University of Cincinnati. PROFESSOR H. SHIPLEY FRY, director of chemical laboratories, University of Cincinnati, lectured on "The electronic conception of valence and the constitution of benzene" before a joint meeting of the Leigh Chemical Society and the Lexington, Kentucky, section of the American Chemical Society at Georgetown College on February 13. AT a meeting of the Faculty Club of the University of Mississippi on February 2, 1920, Dr. Hiram Byrd, director of the department of hygiene, delivered a lecture on "Rattlesnakes." THE president of the Royal College of Physicians, London, has appointed Dr. F. W. Andrews to be Harveian orator, and Dr. R. C. Wall to be Bradshaw lecturer for this year. The council has appointed Dr. Martin Flack to be Milroy lecturer for 1921. The OliverSharpey prize for 1920 has been awarded to Professor Emil Roux, of the Pasteur Institute, Paris. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL MR. J. OGDEN ARMOUR has made a further gift of six million dollars to the Armour Institute of Chicago. A new site for the school has been purchased at the cost of one million dollars, and five million dollars will be expended on buildings. AT YALE UNIVERSITY, Dr. W. H. Sheldon, of Dartmouth College, has been appointed professor of philosophy. Dr. W. R. Longley, has been promoted to a full professorship of mathematics. DR. E. F. HOPKINS, associate plant pathologist at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute and Experiment Station, has been appointed plant pathologist and assistant professor of botany at the University of Missouri. Dr. Hopkins will begin his work on April 1. DR. C. L. METCALF has been promoted to be professor of entomology in the Ohio State University. DR. H. G. FITZGERALD has received an appointment as profesor of hygiene at the University of Toronto, to succeed Dr. J. A. Amyst, who has been appointed deputy minister of health in the Federal Department of Health, Ottawa. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE A PROPOSED METHOD FOR CARRYING So far as is known, the possibility of extending an arc of triangulation across straits or arms of the sea has been limited in the past to cases in which one shore is visible from the other, or at most where the masts of a vessel anchored in mid-channel are visible from both shores. It has occurred to us that much wider gaps may be bridged by the use of lights raised to a high altitude by aircraft or pilot balloons. For example, the distance between the Florida reefs and Cuba is about 90 miles, and the shores not high enough to permit of intervisibility. From an aircraft at a height of 5,000 feet or more above the middle of the straits both sides would be readily visible in clear weather. Suppose now that a series of stations along the Florida coast had been connected in the usual manner with the triangulation net of the United States, and that another series of points on the Cuban coast had been connected with a triangulation covering the island. A light carried by a dirigible or pilot balloon above the middle of the straits could be observed from two or more stations on each shore, and its position accurately fixed with respect to both systems of triangulation. If two or three such aerial points at distances of 30 or 40 miles along the axis of the channel have been tied in this fashion to both triangulations, a strong connection will have been established between them. It is obviously necessary either that the "aerial point" should remain fixed while observations are being made on it, or that the observations at the different stations should all be exactly synchronized. The first is impossible, but the second alternative can easily be realized by using practically instantaneous flashes as signals and observing them photographically. A quantity of flash powder sufficient to produce a signal which could be photographed from 50 miles distance could probably be carried by an unmanned balloon of moderate size and cost, or failing this, a series of such charges attached to parachutes and ignited by time fuses could be dropped from a dirigible. The photographic records would preferably be made with lenses of moderately large aperture and long focus, such as are used for astronomical chart work, which give a field of good definition several degrees in diameter. If the observation stations are several miles back from the shore line, a series of reference lights can be established on the shore, and their azimuths accurately determined in ad vance. The photographs will then show these lights as well as the distant flashes, and the angular elevation and azimuth of the latter can be determined directly from the plates themselves, in exactly the same manner in which astronomers determine the position of a planet with reference to neighboring stars. A number of successive flashes could be recorded on one plate, provided they were so spaced as to avoid confusion, with marked economy both in flying time and computation. Clear weather would be necessary, but not more so than in the case of ordinary methods of observation. With regard to accuracy, it is well known that this standard method of determining angular position by the measurement of photographic plates is capable of very high precision. For example, at the Allegheny Observatory with a 4-inch objective the probable error of a resulting angular coordinate derived from two plates was found to be ± 0.2". The apparent angular diameter of the flash as seen from a distance of 50 miles would be roughly 1" for each foot of its actual linear diameter. As settings may be made on the center of a photographic image within 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. of its diameter, the azimuth of the flash should be obtainable with sufficient accuracy for purposes of primary triangulation, particularly as the mean position determined from the several successive flashes on one plate should be regarded as the real unit of observation. Irregularities in refraction are likely to be less serious than in the case of rays which pass closer to the earth's surface. This method might also be advantageous in crossing wide areas of swamp or jungle. The limiting distance over which it is available can be determined only by actual experiment, but it is likely to exceed 100 miles, which would be great enough to permit the extension of continuous triangulation along the whole chain of the West Indies. The theoretical distance of the horizon from an altitude of 20,000 feet is over 170 miles, so that if the difficulties involved in producing flashes photographically observable at this great distance |