90 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
“The committee on the Barnard medal respectfully recommend that Prof. 
Henri Becquerel, of Paris, member of the Institute, be recommended by the 
National Academy of Sciences to the trustees of Columbia University as the 
proper recipient of the Barnard medal to be awarded next June. In making this 
recommendation the committee has borne in mind not only the important dis- 
coveries in the field of radio-activity made by Professor Becquerel during the last 
five years, but also the fact that he was the original discoverer of the so-called 
dark rays from uranium, which discovery has been the basis of subsequent 
research into and of our present knowledge of the laws of radio-activity.” %* 
Since the formation of the International Association of 
Academies, of which the National Academy became a member, 
the interest in the national and international codperation in 
research work has greatly increased, and the Academy has 
participated in many undertakings of broad scope which have 
been beneficial in the promotion of science. Mention has al- 
ready been made of the work of the International Seismological 
Association and the International Union for Codperation in 
Solar Research. In 1906, a proposal was made to the Academy 
that it should lend its aid and patronage to a scheme for national 
codperation in chemical research. The primary object of the 
plan was to arouse interest in and to provide means for a syste- 
matic attack on the problem of the free-energy changes which 
accompany chemical reactions. ‘The principle of the second 
law of energetics,” remarked the promoter of this enterprise in 
1906, “ that any change in the state of a system, whether physical 
or chemical, is capable of producing under the most favorable 
conditions a definite quantity of work is one whose importance 
has been extensively recognized within the last few years. This 
importance arises not only from the direct significance from a 
scientific and technical standpoint of this maximum quantity of 
work obtainable from any physical change or chemical reaction, 
but also from the fact that from its value alone can be directly 
computed the equilibrium conditions of the chemical reaction in 
question, the direction in which under specified conditions it 
will take place, and the electromotive force of any voltaic cell 
in which the reaction goes on reversibly.” ** 
Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1905, p. 13. 
“Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1906, p. 19. 
