6i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



however, as compared with other pro- ; 

 fessions, is now underestimated. The 

 rich man who employs a lawyer and a 

 physician who charge at the rate of 

 $50,000 a year, regards a thousand 

 dollar a year teacher as good enough 

 for his children. The teacher is not 

 as a rule underpaid, but is a man of 

 inferior ability and character. 



The difficulty in the case of the rela- 

 tively small salaries paid to assistant 

 professors and professors is not so 

 much that they are underpaid, as that 

 universities and colleges are satisfied 

 with men who are worth so little. It 

 however, true that these institu- 



1S 



tions depend on the dignity and pres- 

 tige of the position to attract men, 

 and use this motive in place of salary. 

 The result of this policy, however, is 

 to lower the prestige of the position, 

 so that it can not permanently be used 

 in this way. 



But while we may depend on the 

 competitive system to adjust the sal- 

 aries of teachers and only try to in- 

 crease in the community the appre- 

 ciation of the importance of having 

 able and well-trained men, there still 

 remains the problem of how we are to 

 encourage and pay for original re- 

 search and productive scholarship. 

 These are in the main a by-product of 

 the work of the teacher and are not 

 paid for directly. Institutions want 

 the credit of having men of scientific 

 distinction and men value the honor 

 which follows scientific achievement. 

 But these motives are not sufficient, 

 and become less so as the total number 

 of scientific men increases. While the 

 average salary paid to teachers may be 

 about the same as in the other profes- 

 sions, the leaders do not receive sal- 

 aries commensurate with the incomes 

 of the leading lawyers, physicians, 

 journalists or even clergymen. Under 

 existing conditions it is probably de- 

 sirable that they should receive larger 

 rewards in order that society may 

 have the ablest men in its direct serv- 

 ice and may give them the strongest 

 motives to do their best work. It is 



certainly little less than a scandal that 

 the effective salaries of university 

 professors should have been greatly 

 reduced in the course of the past ten 

 years. 



SIB WILLIAM HUGGINS 

 Death has taken one more of the 

 great men who gave distinction to the 

 Victorian era. Hooker, Wallace, Lis- 

 ter and Galton are left, but the period 

 is now closing which gave Great 

 Britain such distinction in science as 

 has seldom been equaled in any field 

 or in any country. It is indeed pos- 

 sible that the science of Great Britain 

 in the nineteenth century is the great- 

 est achievement of our race. 



Huggins was born in London in 1824. 

 He was privately educated, and held 

 no university or other position, but 

 with ample means erected for himself 

 in 1S56 an observatory at Tulse Hill. 

 He took the lead in applying the spec- 

 troscope to astronomy and may be 

 regarded as the founder of the science 

 of astrophysics. In his work he had 

 the constant assistance of Lady Hug- 

 gins. He was president of the Royal 

 Society and one of the five scientific 

 members of the order of merit. We 

 hope to give in some subsequent issue 

 an appreciation of his great contribu- 

 tions to science. 



LORD KELVIN 



An adequate life of William Thom- 

 son, Baron Kelvin of Largs, has been 



\ written by Professor Silvanus P. 

 Thompson and published by Macmillan 

 and Co. Although an editorial note 

 on Lord Kelvin's life and work was 

 published in a recent issue of the 

 Monthly (November, 1909), too much 

 honor can not be paid to one of the 

 greatest geniuses of the nineteeth cen- 

 tury. We reproduce two from the 

 many interesting portraits which are 

 included in the volumes and Professor 

 Thompson's final paragraph. After 

 describing the funeral in Westminster 



j Abbey, he writes : " For once, in the 



