THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



207 



each science consists of contributions 

 made over a long period of time and 

 from widely separated places. One of 

 the evil results in the universal disaster 

 of this mad war is that the orderly prog- 

 ress of science is interrupted. Each 

 week men of science are killed on the 

 field of battle, and young men from 

 whom science must be recruited die by 

 the thousands. The universities of Ox- 

 ford and of Cambridge boast that each 

 has sent some 8,000 men to the war, and 

 the average life of a British officer 

 after he reaches the front is said to be 

 thirty days. Almost as serious as the 

 sacrifice of men is the loss of the wealth 

 needed for scientific research, and per- 

 haps more disastrous than either is the 

 inevitable distraction of interest and 

 unbalancing of judgment. 



There is a marked disposition at pres- 

 ent for the scientific men of England 

 and France to disparage work which has 

 been done in Germany, and conversely. 

 It is consequently pleasant to read a dis- 

 cussion of this subject such as is con- 

 tributed to a book on ' ' German Cul- 

 ture" (Jacks ; 1915) and to Knowledge 

 by Professor J. Arthur Thomson of the 

 University of Aberdeen, whose recent 

 article on ' ' Eugenics and War ' ' in this 

 journal will be remembered by its read- 

 ers. He argues that Britain, France 

 and Germany run neck and neck in their 

 contributions to science, and illustrates 

 this by a series of corresponding names 

 which are here reproduced. It will be 

 noted that the British names are ar- 

 ranged alphabetically and that for each 

 is given a French and German equiva- 

 lant. 



British French Garman 



Balfour Laeaze- Eoux 



Dalton Duthiers Bunsen 



Darwin Lavoisier Kepler 



Davy Lamarck Weber 



Faraday Legendre Clausius 



Fitzgerald Fourier Hertz 



Foster Becquerel Ludwig 



Galton Claude 



Bernard Weismann 

 Graham Delage Liebig 



Green Berthelot Gauss 



Hunter Galois Gegenbaur 



Harvey Cuvier Humboldt 



tion. If we go back to Harvey, Newton 

 should surely be credited to England, 

 and if Kepler is included for Germany, 

 there is no reason why Kant rather than 

 Lotze should not be taken as its repre- 

 sentative philosopher. The three con- 

 temporary zoologists and the two physiol- 

 ogists credited to England are scarcely 

 among the world 's great men of science. 

 But Professor Thomson only claims to 

 use a rough and ready method. His sets 

 of names may be studied to advantage. 

 As he remarks, if we could, as we can 

 not, represent the merits of three 

 counterparts — British, French and Ger- 

 man — by the three sides of a triangle, 

 the lengths would now be in favor of 

 Britain, again in favor of France, and 

 again in favor of Germany ; yet a super- 

 position of a number of triangles suffi- 

 ciently large to get rid of conspicuous 

 inequalities would yield a not very irreg- 

 ular figure. 



TEE NEW SCIENCE MUSEUM IN 

 LONDON 



We take from the London Times a 

 sketch and some description of the new 

 Science Museum which is to be erected 

 in London between the Natural History 

 Museum and the Imperial College of 

 Science. This building and the one at 

 Munich are the first buildings to be 

 especially constructed for museums of 



