CONGRESS OF ARTS AND SCIENCE. 23 



ranee. Without systematic attempt at characterization, let us swiftly 

 glance at a few scattered sections. Thus E. H. Moore, of Chicago, 

 presided over the section for algebra and analysis in which his col- 

 league Heinrich Maschke spoke on the same platform with the illus- 

 trious Emile Picard, of the Sorbonne — a truly remarkable trio in the 

 purest of pure sciences, the very problems of which are unknown 

 variables even to the educated lay mind. Leave can not be taken of 

 mathematics until attention is called to the immortal name of Pom- 

 care, also of the Sorbonne. preeminent equally in pure mathematics 

 and in their applications to physical research, especially to the prob- 

 lems of celestial mechanics, in which connection he has been called 

 the ' Laplace of the present century.' Poincare read his address 

 before the section of applied mathematics. 



Readers of the Monthly will be well familiar with the name of 

 Karl Lamprecht, of Leipzig, great historian of Germanic culture and 

 philosopher of history, who spoke without a note before the section 

 of medieval history. Other sections of the same department were 

 addressed by Mahaffy, of Dublin; Pais, of Naples; Cordier, of Paris; 

 Bury, of Cambridge; Conrad, of Halle; while under the history of 

 languages came MacDonell, of Oxford ; Sonnenschein, of Birmingham ; 

 Jespersen, of Copenhagen; Paul Mayer and Levi, of the College de 

 France; and Sievers, of Leipzig, the highest authority in phonetics. 

 Classical art was represented by Furtwangler, of Munich; modern 

 painting by Muther, of Breslau, and the Japanese artist Okakura 

 Kurozi, wearing native costume and attended by his lackeys. Sections 

 devoted to the history of oriental religion heard Oldenberg, of Kiel; 

 Goldziher, of Budajjest; Budde, of Marburg; while the history of the 

 Christian Church was discussed by that splendid historian Adolf 

 Harnack, of Berlin, and the scarcely less distinguished Jean Eeville, 

 of the faculty of protestant theology of Paris, both of whom repre- 

 sented ecclesiastical history not as a thing apart, but as merely a dis- 

 tinguishable aspect within the continuous stream of civilization. 



The physical sections are Avorthy of note for their threefold division 

 into physics of matter, physics of ether, and physics of the electron. 

 The last was discussed by Langevin, of the College de France, and 

 the brilliant Eutherford, of McGill, whose experimental researches 

 have resulted in the accepted theory of atomic disintegration as a 

 cause of radioactivity. In one section Sir William Ramsay, in whose 

 laboratory helium was first derived from radium, and the eminent 

 French chemist, Henri Moissan, who, by the way, accomplished the 

 manufacture of artificial diamonds in the laboratory, although his title 

 to fame rests on a much broader foundation, discussed the science of 

 inorganic chemistry. Physical chemistry was represented by the 

 great van't Hoff. of Berlin, who developed the concept of osmotic pres- 

 sure into a consistent theory of solutions and conceived the idea of 



