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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



He was actively engaged in the civil 

 war, first in the defenses of Washing- 

 ton and later as chief engineer and 

 senior aide-de-camp to General Grant. 

 Later he became superintendent of the 

 geodetic survey of the great lakes and 

 of the improvements at the mouth of 

 the Mississippi, and published works 

 on these and other engineering topics. 

 He was elected to the National Acad- 

 emy in 1884, and in 1907 gave the 

 academy a fund of $10,000 for the 

 promotion of researches in electricity 

 magnetism and radian energy. 



Charles Abiathar White, born in 

 1826, though early interested in sci- 

 ence, was late in beginning professorial 

 work. He received a degree in medi- 

 cine at the age of thirty-seven and 

 three years later became state geologist 

 of Iowa and professor of natural his- 

 tory in the state university. He ac- 

 cepted a chair in Bowdoin College in 

 1873 and two years later became geol- 

 ogist in the surveys of Powell and 

 Hayden. For many years he was con- 

 nected with the Geological Survey, the 

 National Museum and the Smithsonian 

 Institution. He was elected to the 

 National Academy in 1889. He pub- 

 lished over two hundred contributions 

 to geology, zoology and botany, main- 

 taining his scientific activity to the 

 end, as is indicated by an article in a 

 recent volume of this journal. 



Mr. Agassiz and Professor Barker 

 died at the age of seventy-five, Gen- 

 eral Constock at the age of seventy- 

 nine, Dr. White at the age of eighty- 

 five. Another American scientific man 

 who played an important part during 

 the second half of the last century and 

 died with his life work fully accom- 

 plished was Professor William Phipps 

 Blake. He was born in 1826 and made 

 valuable studies in the mineral de- 

 posits and geological structure of the 

 Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast 

 regions. Dr. Amos Emerson Dolbear, 

 for thirty-six years professor of phys- 

 ics at Tufts College, known for inven- 



tions and other work in physical sci- 

 ence, has died at the age of seventy- 

 three years. Professor Robert Parr 

 Whitfield, of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, eminent as a geol- 

 ogist, has died at the age of eighty-two 

 years. Dr. Cyrus Thomas, archeologist 

 in the Bureau of American Ethnology 

 since 1882, well known for his con- 

 tributions to anthropology, has died at 

 the age of eighty-five years. 



More grievous than the death of 

 veteran men of science is the loss of 

 those whose work is not accomplished. 

 Charles Reid Barnes, professor of plant 

 pathology in the University of Chicago, 

 dying after a fall at the age of fifty- 

 two, was among our leaders in botany 

 in both performance and promise. Dr. 

 H. T. Ricketts, also of the University 

 of Chicago, but called to the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania, died in Mexico 

 City at the age of thirty-nine years 

 from typhus fever contracted as a re- 

 sult of research work on that disease. 

 Even this partial list shows how severe 

 have been the losses by death from 

 among American men of science during 

 the past six months. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 



The Paris Academy of Sciences has 

 conferred the Janssen Prize, consisting 

 of a gold medal, on Director W. W. 

 Campbell, of the Lick Observatory. — • 

 Professor Theodore W. Richards, of 

 Harvard University, has been invited 

 by the Chemical Society (London) to 

 deliver the next Faraday lecture. This 

 will be the tenth Faraday lecture, the 

 others having been given as follows: 

 Dumas, 1869; Cannizzaro, 1872; Hof- 

 mann, 1875; Wurtz, 1879; Helmholtz, 

 1881; Mendeleef, 1889; Rayleigh, 1895; 

 Ostwald, 1904; Emil Fischer, 1907.— 

 Dr. John Benjamin Murphy, professor 

 of surgery in Northwestern University, 

 has been elected president of the Amer- 

 ican Medical Association, for the meet- 

 ing to be held next year at Los Angeles. 



