SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. EDWARD RHODES STITT, head of the Naval Medical School at Washington, D. C., has been appointed Surgeon General of the Navy, to succeed Surgeon General Braisted who retired on November 26.

DR. WHITMAN CROSS, of the U. S. Geological Survey, has been appointed honorary associate in petrology at the National Museum, succeeding the late Dr. J. P. Iddings. DR. C. L. ALSBERG, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, was elected president of the Association of American Dairy Food and Drug Officials at the recent convention of the Association at St. Louis.

IN the issue of SCIENCE for November 26 (p. 505), Dr. I. C. White should have been given as president of the Geological Society of America.

ARRANGEMENTS have been made by the faculty and trustees of the University of Chicago for the painting of the official portrait of James Rowland Angell, formerly dean of the faculties and head of the department of psychology at the university, who is now head of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Mr. Ralph Clarkson, the Chicago painter who made the highly successful portraits of Professor Thomas C. Chamberlin, former head of the department of geology, and Professor Rollin D. Salisbury, dean of the Ogden Graduate School of Science, has been engaged to paint Mr. Angell's portrait and is now in New York for that purpose. Dean Angell was connected with the University of Chicago for twenty-five years.

DR. B. LAUFER, curator of anthropology in the Field Museum of Chicago, was elected an honorary member of the Finnish Archeological Society of Helsingfors on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of this society on November 6, 1920, and a corresponding member of the Société des Amis de l'Art Asiatique, Hague, Holland. He has recently been appointed honorary curator of Chinese antiquities in the Art Institute of Chicago.

awarded by the Swedish Medical Association this year was Dr. E. Hammarsten for his work describing the isolation from the pancreas of a "coupled" nucleic acid.

DR. C. M. WOODWORTH, who has been making a study of the inheritance of disease resistance in flax with the Office of Cereal Investigations, U. S. Department of Agriculture, with headquarters at Madison, Wisconsin, has resigned to take charge of the plant breeding work in the agronomy department of the University of Illinois.

DR. CARL O. JOHNS, chief of the color laboratory at the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, resigned in November to become director of a newly-established department of general research for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

DR. SWARNA KUMER MITRA, B.S., M.S. (California), Ph.D. (Ohio State), a native Hindu from Calcutta, has been appointed in the Imperial Agricultural Department of India as provisional economic botanist of Assam. Dr. Mitra sails for India early in January.

We learn from the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences that Mr. H. Pittier, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who is at present in Venezuela, will accompany a party of Swiss engineers who are expected in Venezuela in January for the purpose of investigating doubtful points of the VenezuelaColombia boundary as recently arbitrated by the King of Spain. The commission will traverse the territory extending from a point on the Rio Meta to the headwaters of the Guainiia in the Rio Negro basin, a region which has probably never been visited by naturalists.

PROFESSOR SIMON H. GAGE spoke on November 30 before the Cornell University chapter of the Society of Sigma Xi at its first public lecture of the year. He described his recent investigations on the determination of the digestion and assimilation of fatty foods by a study of the blood with the dark-field microscope.

Spitzbergen as the key to the relation between northern Europe and North America."

THE department of physics of the Carnegie Institute of Technology recently held an evening session of its physics colloquium, at which more than a hundred guests, largely engineers and scientific men of the district, were present. The speakers of the occasion were Dr. Heber D. Curtis, the newly appointed director of the Allegheny Observatory, and Dr. Keivin Burns, astronomer. Dr. Curtis spoke on "Future work on the Einstein theory." Dr. Burn's subject was "The stars and physics."

DR. H. DESLANDRES, president of the Paris Academy of Sciences, gave, at the meeting on October 4, an éloge on Sir Norman Lockyer, who was a correspondent of the academy in the section of astronomy.

THE death is announced at the age of seventy-six years of Dr. Théodore Flournoy, formerly professor of physiology and psychology at the University of Geneva.

THE second annual meeting of the Mineralogical Society of America will take place in Chicago, on December 29, 1920. By a recent vote of the Geological Society of America, the Mineralogical Society of America was closely affiliated with it.

Ar the Chicago meetings papers on genetical subjects will be presented at the Wednesday morning session of the Botanical Society of America, and at the Wednesday afternoon session of the American Society of Zoologists. These two sessions, together with the meetings of the American Society of Naturalists on Thursday and Friday, provide a nearly continuous program for those interested primarily in genetics and evolution. The annual dinner of the naturalists will be held Thursday evening, at the Hotel Sherman. At the close of the dinner Dr. Jacques Loeb will deliver the presidential address, "On Osmosis." A smoker for all biologists will be held Tuesday evening in the social rooms of Ida Noyes Hall, following the address of Professor W. M. Wheeler, retiring vice-president of the

American Association and chairman of Section F.

A SPECIAL attraction to members of the association, and to others in attendance at Chicago will be an exceptionally interesting exhibit and working demonstration showing the apparatus and scientific principles upon which the wireless telephone is based. This collection of working models has been designed to reproduce the more fundamental discoveries in unapplied science which have paved the way for the wireless telephone and without which this great practical achievement could not have been realized. The exhibit comprises many exceedingly ingenious and spectacular automatically demonstrating models. It is especially valuable as a concrete illustration of the manner in which abstract scientific study has always had to precede practical achievements. The history of the wireless telephone as here set forth emphasizes a great principle of human progress, that the abstract scientist and reclusive philosopher of one generation prepares the way for the technician of the next; the scientific laboratory of one generation becomes the workshop of the next; the "useless theory" of one is the practise of the next. The exhibit has been prepared by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and by the Western Electric Company, under the auspices of the National Research Council, and it has been made possible to have it at Chicago for the association meeting through the efforts of Dr. Vernon Kellogg, permanent secretary of the National Research Council, and of Dr. H. E. Howe, chairman of research extension of the council. The exhibit may be inspected at the Chicago Art Institute (Michigan Avenue near the Van Buren Street Station of the Illinois Central Railway).

THE Austin Section of the Southwestern Geological Society meets at the University of Texas, Austin, on the first Friday night of each month. The program for the present session is as follows:

October 1, 1920: F. B. Plummer, "Oil structures in the great basin of Utah."

November 5, 1920: J. W. Beede, "Geology of the

Mackenzie River district."

December 3, 1920: Ira Edwards, "Geological field work in Wisconsin.''

January 7, 1921: W. S. Adkins, "The Solitario." February 4, 1921: H. P. Bybee, "The Hewitt, Oklahoma, oil field.'

March 4, 1921: R. A. Liddle, "Faulting and structure in Medina County, Texas."

IN an editorial note Nature says: There can be no doubt that scientific progress in relation to agriculture has been seriously hampered in the past by the poor material prospects offered to the scientific worker, and the Ministry of Agriculture, in recognizing the fact and in attempting to remove the defect, has shown a spirit of enlightened goodwill which is of hopeful augury. The provision of a grant earmarked to cover the salaries of workers in universities and in institutions such as the Rothamsted Experimental Station, in addition to, and separate from, a grant for laboratory and general research expenses, is a real effort to ensure that the workers shall have some security of tenure and some prospect of a settled career in the prosecution of research. The principle is sound, but the practical application is as yet not entirely successful. A system of grading the workers is perhaps inevitable, and the salaries allotted to the different grades are in some respects not reasonable. But the annual increments are too small, espceially during the years when the average worker is marrying and his expenses are increasing, and there is not sufficient range between the extremes of the scale, e.g., a worker recently graduated and beginning his career receives £450; the same man ten years later, with a wife, two or more children, and a position to maintain, receives only twice that amount, and is actually worse off than before. The total number of graded posts is much too small even to cover only those already working in agricultural research. That will, no doubt, be improved as time goes on, but meanwhile it leads to stagnant promotion and invidious selection. There must be something seriously at fault when (to take only one particular instance) a worker of more than thirteen years' experi

ence in research, of acknowledged eminence and authority in an important subject, should be offered, and have in the meantime to accept, a post in the third grade (called "junior assistants"), and be classed along with those at the start of their career with no record of solid achievement behind them.

ACCORDING to the Dublin correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor the nineteenth annual report of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland has just been issued showing how its annual income of £190,000 has been spent. Agricultural purposes alone absorb £124,000 of this, £55,000 being reserved for technical instruction, and £10,000 for fisheries. During the academic year 1918-1919, 258 students attended the Royal College of Science. In addition to these there were three research students. As a result of the war there was a temporary decline in the attendance of readers at the National Library of Ireland. Many valuable additions have been made to this library. Visits to the Museum of Science and Art showed an increase from the previous year of neary 24,000 and many of these were serious students. There is a growing demand for homegrown timber, consequent on the reduction of supplies from abroad during the war, which demonstrates the inadequate provision hitherto made for the encouragement of forestry. The reconstructive committee, therefore, has turned its attention in this direction and the result of an investigation has been given effect to in the Forestry Act which came into force on September 1, 1919. The Forestry Act provides for the formation of a forestry fund amounting to £3,500,000 during the next ten years and the appointment of eight commissioners whose duty it will be to promote the interest of forestry and its developments, and the production and supply of timber. The powers and duties of the Agricultural Department are to be transferred to these commissioners. To assist them in their duties under the act provision is made for the appointment of four consultative committees, one of which will deal with Ireland.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

IT is stated in Nature that the first list of donations in response to the appeal of the University of Birmingham for £500,000 shows gifts or promises to the amount of more than £250,000. Nearly half of this amount is given to the Petroleum Mining Endowment Fund. The largest single gift is an anonymous one of £50,000 for the general fund. A sum of £5,000 is for a chair of Italian, and an equal amount is given by the James Watt Memorial Fund for a James Watt research chair in engineering.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR EUGENE TAYLOR, of the University of Wisconsin, has been appointed professor and head of the department of mathematics at the University of Idaho.

DR. J. C. WITT, assistant professor of analytical chemistry in the University of Pittsburgh, has resigned, to become chief research chemist for the Portland Cement Association with headquarters in Chicago. Dr. C. J. Engelder, of Hornell, N. Y., has been appointed to the position at the University of Pittsburgh.

MR. WILLIAM B. BROWN, associate physicist of the aeronautic power plants section of the Bureau of Standards, has been appointed instructor in physics at the Ohio State University.

DR. RODNEY B. HARVEY has resigned as plant physiologist, bureau of plant industry, Washington, D. C., to accept the position of assistant professor in plant physiology at the University of Minnesota and assistant plant physiologist in the Minnesota experiment station.

DR. BENJAMIN SCHWARTZ, assistant zoologist in the Bureau of Animal Industry, has been appointed professor of protozoology and parasitology in the University of the Philippines and will sail for Manila late in December.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE
HELIUM AND HYDROGEN MODELS
TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In a communi-
cation to the SCIENCE issue of June 18 Dr.
Irving Langmuir proposed a model of the

helium atom consisting of a nucleus of charge 2e accompanied by a pair of electrons which execute symmetrical oscillations about two nearly circular arcs on opposite sides of the nucleus. In the issue of November 5 he has proposed a similar model for the hydrogen molecule, and another, of a somewhat different type, for the positively charged H, ion. The writer was particularly interested in these models, for in each case the resultant angular momentum is zero, a circumstance which seemed to offer an explanation of the diamagnetic behavior of helium and hydrogen, and of the failure of the theories of the specific heat of hydrogen based on the assumption that the molecule is gyroscopic.

Unfortunately, Dr. Langmuir did not see how to apply the Wilson-Sommerfeld quantum conditions to the determination of the energies of these models, and therefore was not able to fix the theoretical energies and ionization potentials definitely. These quantum conditions are

S pidg1 = S (37) dq1 = n,h,

S p2dq2 = S (37) dq2 = n2h,

...

(1)

where T is the kinetic energy of the atom or molecule, 91, 92, are a properly chosen set of coordinates, P1, P2,..., are the corresponding momenta, and N1, N2 are any integers. Each integral is to be extended over a complete cycle of values of the corresponding coordinate. Dr. Langmuir states that he is unable to apply these equations to his models1 because he does not know what systems of coordinates to use. The choice of a proper coordinate system is not essential, however, to the application of these conditions to the type of problem under consideration. For whatever coordinates are used, they will have a common period t, which makes possible a con

1 With the exception of the positive H, ion. He does apply the conditions to this model, and correctly, but expresses doubt concerning the validity of the somewhat unsatisfactory result on account of his uncertainty regarding the coordinate system.

This integral is invariant of the choice of coordinates and can be evaluated easily if the orbit and potential energy function are known. Equation (3) is not equivalent to the quantum conditions (1), but it is a deduction from them for the type of problem under consideration, which is sufficient to fix the possible energy values of the atom or molecule. In the normal state the atom will have the least energy possible and the quantum number n should therefore be small, though the value zero must be ruled out if there is to be any dynamic equilibrium at all. In the case of the helium atom or the hydrogen molecule, it is to be expected that n will be either one or two.

I have carried through the numerical evaluation of the action integral for the helium atom model and regret to say that the calculation shows that if the atom is given an energy corresponding to its ionization potential, the quantum condition (3) is not satisfied.

In making the calculation I have used an approximate expression for the path of the electron. This is permissible, since, by the principle of least action, the variation in the integral produced by a small variation in the

path, holding the total energy constant, vanishes to small quantities of the first order. The determination of the approximate path was based on the data furnished by Dr. Langmuir. He says that the path of each electron is very nearly an arc of an eccentric circle subtending an angle of 155° 56′ at the nucleus. The radius vector from the nucleus to the midpoint of the orbit is 0.2534 X 10-8 cm. for an ionization potential of 25.59 volts, and the radius vector at the end of the orbits is 1.138 times as great. By expanding the expression for the radius vector into a power series in ✪ (the angle between the momentary radius vector and the radius vector to the midpoint), and discarding higher power terms, it is easy to show that an equation of the form r = ro(1 + k02)

(4)