I04 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 



In addition to Wolcott Gibbs and 

 Otis T. Mason, the country has lost in 

 the death of William Keith Brooks one 

 of its most eminent men of science. 

 A biographical sketch of Professor 

 Brooks, who had been professor of zool- 

 ogy at the Johns Hopkins University 

 since 1876, together with a portrait, 

 will be found in the issue of The Pop- 

 VLAR Science Monthly for July, 1899. 

 We regret also to record the death of 

 Dr. Andrew J. McCosh, a leading sur- 

 geon of New York City; of M. Alfred 

 Ditte, the French chemist, and of W. E. 

 Ayrton, the British physicist and elec- 

 trician. 



Dr. Richard C. MacLaurin, for the 

 past year professor of mathematical 

 physics in Columbia University and 

 previously professor of mathematics in 

 the University of New Zealand, has 

 been elected president of the Massachu- 

 setts Institute of Technology. — Pro- 

 fessor W. W. Campbell, director of the 

 Lick Observatory, has been appointed 

 lecturer for next year on the Silliman 

 foundation at Yale University. 



Nobel prizes in the sciences for 1908 

 have been awarded as follows: For 

 chemistry. Professor Ernest Ruther- 

 ford, director of the physical labora- 

 tories of the University of Manchester, 



England; for physics, M. Gabriel Lipp- 

 I mann, professor of physics in the Uni- 

 versity of Paris; for medicine, divided 

 between Dr. Paul Ehrlich, of Berlin, 

 and Professor Elie Metchnikoff, of the 

 Pasteur Institute of Paris. 



The Royal Society has awarded med- 

 als as follows: the Copley medal to 

 Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in recogni- 

 tion of the great value of his numerous 

 contributions to natural history, and 

 of the part he took in working out the 

 theory of the origin of species by nat- 

 ural selection; the Rumford medal to 

 Professor H. A. Lorentz, for his in- 

 vestigations in optical and electrical 

 science; a Royal medal to Professor 

 John Milne, for his preeminent services 

 in the modern development of seismo- 

 logical science; a Royal medal to Dr. 

 Henry Head, for his researches on the 

 relations between the visceral and so- 

 matic nerves and on the functions of 

 the afferent nerves; the Davy medal 

 to Professor W. A. Tilden, for his dis- 

 coveries in chemistry, especially on the 

 terpenes and on atomic heats; the 

 Darwin medal to Professor August 

 Weismann, for his eminent services in 

 support of the doctrine of evolution by 

 means of natural selection; the Hughes 

 medal to Professor Eugene Goldstein, 

 for his discoveries on the nature of 

 electric discharge in rarefied gases. 



