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tution could be explained only on a basis of stereoisomerism, he developed an extension of the valence hypothesis and introduced the concept "coordination number" of elements.

This conception was the stimulating cause of a great mass of researches which embodied the discovery of many new compounds, many new examples of isomerism, brought rational classification into the whole field of complex inorganic compounds and led by logical development of theoretical views to the discovery of optically active inorganic compounds. None realized more clearly than he that in his extension of the valence hypothesis he had not reached any ultimate truth but had merely added one definite stepping stone.

To the little laboratory in Zurich, with its all too limited equipment, he attracted students from every part of the world. Eventually adequate funds were placed at his disposal, with which was constructed one of the model laboratories of Europe. His fear at the time was that he might not be able to carry into the commodious new quarters the spirit which had permeated the old laboratory. This fear was groundless, as the character of the researches from the new laboratory abundantly proved.

In 1912 Professor Werner was LeBlanc Medallist of the Société Chemique de France. In 1915 he was elected an honorary member of the Chemical Society (London) and in the same year was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

An indefatigable seeker after truth has gone to his rest. The example of his life remains a constant inspiration.

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

THE UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY AND RECENT CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION

DURING the past session of Congress, the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey was benefited by provisions in three bills.

In the act making appropriations for the naval service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, it is provided "That the superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey shall

have the relative rank, pay and emoluments of a captain in the navy, and that hereafter he shall be appointed by the president, by and with the consent of the senate, from the list of commissioned officers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey not below the relative rank of commander for a term of four years, and he may be reappointed for further periods of four years each.

In the act making appropriations for the sundry civil expenses of the government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, it is provided "That the title of 'superintendent' of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey is hereby changed to 'director,' but this change shall not affect the status of the present incumbent or require his reappointment, provided further that the secretary of commerce may designate one of the hydrographic and geodetic engineers to act as assistant director."

The third act which contains legislation affecting the commissioned personnel of the Coast and Geodetic Survey is one entitled, "An act to increase the efficiency of the commissioned and enlisted personnel of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Public Health Service, through the temporary provision of bonuses or increased compensation." This act provides for certain increases in salary for all commissioned officers varying in amount from $480 to $840 per annum. It contains the following provision affecting the commissioned force of the Coast and Geodetic Survey:

That in lieu of compensation now prescribed by law, commissioned officers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey shall receive the same pay and allow ances as now are or hereafter may be prescribed for officers of the Navy with whom they hold relative rank as prescribed in the act of May 22, 1917, entitled, "An act to temporarily increase the commissioned and warrant and enlisted strength of the Navy and Marine Corps, and for other purposes," including longevity; and all laws relating to the retirement of commissioned officers of the Navy shall hereafter apply to commissioned officers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey; Provided, That hereafter longevity pay for officers in the Army,

Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Public Health Service and Coast and Geodetic Survey shall be based on the total of all service in any or all of said services.

This law makes a substantial increase in the pay and allowances of the commissioned personnel of the Coast and Geodetic Survey who hold relative rank from second lieutenant to colonel in the army and from ensign to captain in the navy. The commissioned personnnel of the Surveys will also be greatly benefited by the retirement clause of this act. The salary scale for the commissioned personnel of the survey had previously been so inadequate that it was impossible to secure applicants for the vacant positions. This is shown by the fact that there are to-day about 40 vacancies in the commissioned force of 140. This has been increased to 50 by the retirement of ten officers who have reached the retirement age. In the future the pay and allowances of the lowest commissioned grade will be about $2,500 per annum. Appointments to this grade will be made from the grades of junior engineer and deck officer, the entrance positions. Six months' experience in the lowest grade is necessary before promotion to the commissioned personnel.

The U. S. Civil Service Commission will shortly announce an examination to be held about the middle of July from which to secure eligibles to fill the entering positions.

THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATIONS ENDOWMENT OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

THE Rockefeller Foundation has offered to give about $6,000,000 to University College, London, and its hospital. Dr. George E. Vincent has issued a statement in which he says:

Since the Rockefeller Foundation is cooperating with governments in many parts of the British Empire it recognizes the importance of aiding medical education in London, where the training of personnel and the setting of standards for health work throughout the empire are so largely centered.

The University College and Hospital School have been selected because of the physical unity of the

hospital and medical school buildings and the close relationships existing between the University College, which provides the laboratory courses, and the University College Hospital and Medical School, which furnishes clinical teaching.

The college and school are fortunate in having assembled a group of able men who are deeply interested in teaching and research. E. H. Starling and William M. Bayliss, physiologists, and G. Elliot Smith, anatomist, are scientists of distinction, while T. R. Elliott, G. Blanker Thomas Lewis, Sir John Bradford, C. C. Choyce, H. R. Kenwood, H. Betty Shaw and Sydney Martin are clinicians of recognized standing.

The authorities of the schools, supported heartily by the faculty, have organized full-time clinical "units" in such a way as to combine the care of patients and research with the teaching of students. This feature of the work especially influenced the foundation to decide to assist in furthering a plan which it is believed will have an important effect upon the development of British medicine.

The building program for which £590,000 have been appropriated will include an institute of anatomy comparable with any in the United States. A new home for nurses, new quarters for resident physicians, a biochemical building, laboratory facilities in close connection with hospital wards, the remodeling of a hospital with the addition of twenty beds, and a new obstetrical unit with a capacity of sixty patients. These additions will provide a total of 500 beds.

It is proposed to increase the annual expenditures by the approximately £50,000, of which the foundation will provide endowment to produce an income of £30,000. This additional maintenance will be expended upon a new staff in anatomy, an increase in the staff of physiology, the provision of a full-time unit in obstetrics and various items of increased laboratory and clinical service throughout the institutions concerned. It is believed that the obstetrical unit plan offers prospects of a success which will be of value to the entire world. The subject now in England, as elsewhere, is poorly taught and needs reorganization under improved conditions.

The foundation has a special interest in the proposed Institute of Anatomy because thus far under British auspices a true university department which combines both teachings and research in the fields of anatomy, histology and embryology has not been developed. It is believed that such an institute, by unified efforts in these three branches of anat

omy, is of prime importance not only to the teaching of the medical student but also for the progress of anatomy, particularly on its research side.

GIFTS TO UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

TRUSTEES of the General Education Board and of the Rockefeller Foundation announce appropriations of $20,251,900 for various purposes of general education and for the development of medical schools. The statement of the trustees is as follows:

For appropriations from the fund of $50,000,000 which Mr. Rockefeller gave last December nearly 250 institutions have made application to the General Education Board. A careful statistical inquiry shows that in order to raise the level of salaries in a sufficiently large number of these institutions, to a degree somewhat commensurate with increased cost of living, their endowment funds would have to be increased by from $150,000,000 to $200,000,000.

It is evident that to accomplish this result the $50,000,000 in the hands of the board will have to be supplemented by funds from other sources in the ratio of two or three to one. This has been kept in mind in making appropriations which have been made contingent upon the raising of additional amounts.

At the recent meeting appropriations were made to ninety-eight colleges and universities out of those which are under consideration. To this group of institutions the General Education Board appropriated for endowment to increase salaries the sum of $12,851,666 on condition that they would themselves reach the goal they had set and secure for the same purpose supplementary sums aggregating $30,613,334. Thus, these colleges and universities if successful will increase their endowments available for teachers' salaries to the extent of $43,465,000.

In a few cases institutions are not asking for endowment funds but only for temporary contributions toward a certain total annual subscription which it is hoped later to fund permanently. The board has made a number of such appropriations on a two- or three-year basis.

For these purposes an additional sum of $2,184,384 was appropriated covering a period of one to three years, making a total appropriation by the general education board from Mr. Rockefeller's special gift of $15,036,050.

In the following list appropriations to medical schools in the United States were made by the General Education Board, while those to institutions in Brussels and Halifax were voted by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Washington University Medical School, St. Louis -For endowment, $1,250,000; for additional laboratory facilities and equipment, $70,000.

Yale Medical School-For endowment (toward a total of $3,000,000), $1,000,000.

Harvard Medical School-For improved facilities in obstetrics, $300,000; for the development of teaching in psychiatry, $350,000.

Johns Hopkins Medical School-For development of a new department of pathology (toward a total of $600,000) $40,000.

Dalhousie University Medical School, HalifaxFor buildings and equipment, $400,000. For endowments, $100,000.

Medical Research Foundation of Elizabeth, Queen of the Belgians, Brussels-For general purposes of medical research, 1,000,000 francs.

ENDOWMENT OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MR. GEORGE EASTMAN and the General Education Board have given the University of Rochester $9,000,000 for a school of medicine, surgery and dentistry. In connection with it the Rochester Dental Dispensary, an institution recently built and endowed by Mr. Eastman, will furnish the clinic for the study of dentistry, at the same time continuing its present work in caring for the teeth of children. The details of the endowment were announced at Rochester on June 12, by Dr. Rush Rhees, president of the university; Dr. Abraham Flexner, secretary of the General Education Board, and Mr. Eastman, head of the Kodak industry, at a meeting of the trustees of the university, dispensary and local hospitals and other persons directly interested. Of the $9,000,000 the General Education Board gives $5,000,000 and Mr. Eastman $4,000,000. This is in addition to the dispensary which with its endowment is valued at $1,500,000. The most modern laboratories for anatomy, physiology and pathology and a 250-bed teaching hospital are to be constructed.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS NEW YORK UNIVERSITY has conferred the doctorate of laws on Dr. William H. Nichols, president of the General Chemical Company of New York, and recently president of the American Chemical Society.

THE University of Maine has conferred the Ph.D. on Dr. Lamson Scribner, of the United States Department of Agriculture.

THE University of Arizona has conferred the degree of doctor of laws on Thomas Henry Kearney, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, in recognition of his work in the breeding of Egyptian long-staple cotton at the Sacaton Station in Arizona. Here he and his colaborers isolated the first plant of the Pima variety of cotton, so well adapted to the southwestern region, propagated it to the extent necessary to make commercial plantings, and are still occupied in producing a large amount of absolutely pure seed each year. The Pima cotton crop of Arizona was worth approximately $20,000,000 in 1919.

THE honorary degree of doctor of science was conferred upon George N. Hoffer, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, by Lebanon Valley College, at their fifty-fourth annual commencement exercises, in recognition of his contribution to our knowledge of cereal diseases. Dr. Hoffer graduated from Lebanon Valley in 1909 and is at present working at the experiment station at Purdue University.

DURING a visit to Millbank Hospital on June 8, King George bestowed on Major General William C. Gorgas, former surgeon general of the United States army, the insignia of Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. General Gorgas was a patient in Queen Alexandra's Nursing Home for Officers.

THE president of the French republic has conferred the honor of Officer of the Legion of Honor on Dr. Aldo Castellani, of the London School of Tropical Medicine, for his method of combined typhoid-paratyphoid and enteric-cholera vaccination.

Ar the end of the present academic year Professor Frederic S. Lee retires, at his own

request, from the directorship of the department of physiology of Columbia University, and hereafter he will occupy a research professorship. He sails for Europe early in July and expects to spend the coming year abroad.

MR. G. W. MOREY, of the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, who has been on leave of absence and in charge of the optical glass plant of the Spencer Lens Company of Buffalo, New York, since November, 1918, has returned to resume his research work at the laboratory.

PROFESSOR CHARLES BASKERVILLE, in recognition of his investigations on inhalation anesthetics, has been elected a member of the research committee of the National Anesthesia Research Society.

AT the St. Louis meeting of the American Chemical Society a communication was presented from Dr. W. F. Hillebrand regarding the apparently organized thefts of platinum ware that are taking place throughout the United States, with the suggestion that a committee be appointed to consider whether or not legislation might not be recommended to Congress which would assist in controlling the matter. The council voted that such a committee be appointed, and the president appointed R. B. Moore, of the Bureau of Mines, Washington, D. C., Chas. H. Kerk, of J. F. Bishop & Company, Malvern, Pa., and Geo. F. Kunz, of Tiffany & Company.

SIR HUMPHREY D. ROLLESTON, Royal College of Physicians of London; Colonel H. J. Waring, Royal College of Surgeons of London; Dr. Norman Walker, Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburg and the Royal Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of Glasgow, and Professors Gustave Roussy and E. E. Desmarest, of the University of Paris, were present at the meeting of the American Medical Association at New Orleans and have been visiting the leading medical centers of the country. They are the guests of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States.

DR. W. C. PHALEN, formerly geologist in the U. S. Geological Survey and mineral technol

ogist in the Bureau of Mines, has been engaged as geologist by the Solvay Process Company with headquarters at Syracuse, N. Y.

A MEETING of the New York Section of the Société de Chimie Industrielle was held at Rumford Hall, on the evening of May 14. The following officers were elected: President, Marston T. Bogert; Vice-president, J. Enrique Zanetti; Treasurer, J. V. N. Dorr; Secretary, Charles A. Doremus; Council, Jerome Alexander, L. H. Baekeland, Charles Baskerville, Henri Blum, Charles F. Chandler, René Engel, Georges de Geofroy, Ellwood Hendrick, Charles H. Herty, George F. Kunz, W. H. Nichols, G. E. Valabrègue. The meeting was addressed by M. Maurice Casenave, minister plenipotentiary, director-general of French Services in the United States on "Commercial relations between France and the United States," and by Mr. Joseph H. Choate, general counsel of the Chemical Foundation, Inc., on "Conditions of the chemical industry in the United States before the war."

DR. L. HEKTOEN, of the John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, Chicago, delivered the Noble Wiley Jones lectures of the University of Oregon, on May 31 and June 2, the subject of the first lecture being "Old and new knowledge of humidity" and of the second "Phases of streptococcus infection."

DR. W. VAN BEMMELEN, director of the Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory of Batavia, delivered an address on "The volcanoes of Java," before the Washington Academy of Sciences on June 15.

ON May 24, 1920, a statue of Edward Van Beneden was unveiled at Liège, Belgium, with appropriate exercises. Dr. Robert W. Hegner, of the school of hygiene and public health of the Johns Hopkins University, acted as the American representative on this occasion.

IN the issue of SCIENCE of April 23 it was stated that the family of Mr. Henry Phipps had given $500,000 to the Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania for the study of tuberculosis. We are requested to state that this sum is given contingent on

the raising of a total of $3,000,000 for the endowment of the institute.

DR. J. LUNELL, physician and botanist at Leeds, N. D., since 1894, has died. Dr. Lunell was an enthusiastic botanist and published a number of articles on North Dakota plants, the most extensive of these is the Catalogue of the Vascular Plants which was noted in this journal for November 1, 1918.

THE tenth season of the Marine Laboratory of Pomona College will begin June 24, at Laguna Beach, Orange county, California. There will be several courses in general biology and general zoology. There are opportunities for special work, and eight private laboratories are reserved for investigators.

THE publication committee of the Zoological Society, London, has issued a notice calling the attention of those who propose to offer papers to the great increase in the cost of paper and printing. This, it is stated, will render it necessary for the present that papers should be condensed, and be limited so far as possible to the description of new results.

DR. CORNELIUS BETTEN, for the past five years secretary of the New York State College of Agriculture, has just been made vicedean of resident instruction, the appointment to take effect July 1, 1920. Dr. Betten is a graduate of Cornell, of the class of 1906, where he was fellow in entomology. After graduation he went to Lake Forest College at Lake Forest, Illinois, where he was professor of biology and head of the department. In 1915, he returned to his alma mater as secretary of the college of agriculture. Under authorization of recent legislation for the college of agriculture, provision is made for three vicedeans or directors; a vice-dean of the college, a vice-director of extension, and a vicedirector of the experiment station. The faculty of the college was asked to make nominations, and Dr. Betten was practically selected by his associates, the actual appointment by the trustees of the university being a ratification of the faculty's choice. Professor M. C. Burritt has been for some time vice-director of extension. The vice-director of experiment stations still remains to be chosen. Under

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