THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



615 



of the department of chemistry, Har- 

 vard University, and Professor fcitrat- 

 ton, director of the National Bureau 

 of Standards. 



SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS AND SCI- 

 ENTIFIC MEN IN THE 

 MIDDLE WEST 



The National Academy of Sciences 

 is meeting in St. Louis as this issue 

 of the Monthly goes to press; the 

 American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, with a number of 

 affiliated societies, will hold its convo- 

 cation week meeting in Minneapolis at 

 the end of December. The National 

 Academy has only once before since its 

 foundation in 1863 held a meeting west 

 of the Atlantic seaboard. This meet- 

 ing was at Chicago in the autumn of 

 1903 and was fully as successful as the 

 autumn meetings in eastern cities. 

 The American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science has been more 

 national in the range of its meetings, 

 having in 1901 gone as far west as 

 Denver and in 1905 as far south as 

 New Orleans. It met in St. Louis in 

 1903, in Madison in 1893 and in Min- 

 neapolis in 1883. Some of the affiliated 

 societies which last year met with the 

 association will not go to Minneapolis, 

 there being scientific meetings in 

 Ithaca, New Haven, Princeton and 

 Pittsburgh. Still the number of scien- 

 tific men in the middle west is now so 

 large that a successful meeting at Min- 

 neapolis is assured. The University of 

 Minnesota is one of the great state in- 

 stitutions; in recent years it has had 

 a notable growth, and its future is 

 assured by the immense fund which 

 the state holds for educational pur- 

 poses. 



The fact that scientific men and 

 their leaders are no longer concen- 

 trated on the eastern seaboard is indi- 

 cated by the residences of the retiring 

 and the incoming presidents of the 

 American Association — President Jor- 

 dan on the Pacific coast and Professor 

 Michelson in Chicago. A statistical 

 study of the origin and distribution of 



American men of science, recently 

 made by the editor of this journal and 

 published in the issues of Science for 

 .November 4 and 11, shows that the 

 central and western states now possess 

 a fair proportion of our leading scien- 

 tific men and that they produce even 

 more than they retain. The thousand 

 leading scientific men of the country 

 were selected by asking ten eminent 

 men of science in each of twelve sci- 

 ences to arrange those who had done 

 research work in the order of the value 

 of their work. 



Of these leading scientific men there 

 were in Boston 126, in New York 120 

 and in Washington 109. These three 

 cities remain our chief scientific cen- 

 ters, but none the less there has been 

 a significant westward movement in 

 recent years. The list referred to has 

 been made up twice, and it is possible 

 to give the changes which have taken 

 place in four years. In this short 

 period the University of Chicago has 

 gained nine men, the University of Illi- 

 nois eleven and the University of Wis- 

 consin twelve. 



Even more significant is- a considera- 

 tion of the origin of the 238 men who 

 have attained scientific standing be- 

 tween the compilation of the two lists 

 and obtain for the first time this year 

 a place among the thousand. Massa- 

 chusetts has the highest birthrate of 

 scientific men now as before, but it has 

 sunk from 109 per million of its popu- 

 lation to 85. The productivity has 

 fallen in every one of the Atlantic 

 states, from 47 to 36 in New York, 

 from 42 to 17 in New Jersey, from 23 

 to 19 in Pennsylvania and from 38 to 

 13 in Maryland. On the other hand, 

 it has increased in all but one of the 

 north central states, from 36 to 74 in 

 Michigan, which state now stands next 

 to Massachusetts as a center for the 

 production of scientific men. 



Most of the north central states do 

 not as yet retain the men whom they 

 produce. Thus twice as many have 

 been born in Michigan, Ohio and Indi- 

 ana as reside in those states. Still the 



