4 HARMON NORTHROP MORSE— REMSEN [MEM0,Ils [ mTxt 



II. PRESIDENT WOODWARD'S ADDRESS 



When a man of distinction in science closes his terrestrial career and passes over to one of 

 the older planets, or possibly to one of the hotter stars, of the universe, his demise gives rise, 

 in general, to few reflections and to few regrets. The best that the public can say of him is 

 that he left none of the memories of mischief which constitute what Doctor Johnson called 

 "no desirable fame." But this is because the world at large, learned and unlearned, does not 

 understand him rather than by reason of any disposition to underrate his motives or his achieve- 

 ments. In proportion as his work has been advanced or recondite, it will be difficult to under- 

 stand, and in about the same proportion the rewards he receives will be mostly posthumous. 

 The unlearned of his contemporaries will call him a "high brow," while the majority of the 

 learned, in our day, at any rate, will call him a "narrow specialist," and let him go at that. 



It thus happens that the discoveries and the advances of any age, are, as a rule, adequately 

 understood and utilized only by succeeding ages, and that the originators of such discoveries 

 and advances are oftenest unknown and hence unappreciated except by a very limited number 

 of fellow specialists working in the same or in adjacent fields of research. Not infrequently 

 the pioneer work of these originators is either overlooked, forgotten, or attributed to others. 

 Hence we have patent laws and patent offices to determine priorities and rights in cases of 

 inventions, and medals and prizes and a "Hall of Fame" to bestow belated honors on our 

 eminent contemporaries and predecessors. 



But while these ex post facto devices have the merit of providing means for inductions 

 based on all evidence available, they generally fail to afford the public any adequate recogni- 

 tion either of the nature of the work commended or of the methods by which it was accomplished. 

 Such pioneer achievements are still, even in this enlightened age, commonly attributed not to 

 foresight, industry, persistence, and the utilization of a long line of mistakes and successes of 

 our predecessors, but to the vague discontinuities of supermen and of miraculous conditions. In 

 respect to the real place in civilization to be assigned to constructive thinkers and in respect to 

 the need of such for progress, we have still almost everything to learn. The truth of this appar- 

 ently dogmatic assertion is well illustrated by the ease with which the populace is now led to 

 entertain the notion that Euclidean geometry and Newtonian dynamics may be displaced 

 summarily by a highly praiseworthy " theory of relativity " whose author makes no pretensions 

 to such revolutionary sentiments. 



It is specially fitting at this time, therefore, that your university should hold a conference 

 in commemoration of the life, the character, and the accomplishments of one of her most devoted 

 and most productive investigators. His career exemplifies well the singleness of purpose and 

 the arduous labors essential to progress in the realm of learning in general and in the domain of 

 physical science in particular. He was a typical man of science. His interests, like those of 

 the German chemist, Becher, of the seventeenth century, lay among the "flames and the 

 fumes," and if need be, among the "poisons and the poverty" of the laboratory. Becher 

 lived in an age when chemistry was slowly emerging out of alchemy, but what he said of himself 

 was doubtless often thought, if not said, by Morse and by many of our contemporaries. In 

 his physica subterranea Becher says, "My kingdom is not of this world," referring, of course, 

 to those who would in his day, as in ours, measure everything by the gold standard. And of 

 the alchemists, whose prototypes are still to be reckoned with, he says, "Pseudo-chemists 

 seek gold, but the true philosophers, science, which is more precious than any gold." 



Such undoubtedly were the ideals that animated Morse in his career as a chemist, as a 

 teacher, and as an investigator; but he was not a man who would render his ideals or his activi- 

 ties obtrusive in comparison with, or in competition with, the interests of men in other fields 

 of learning. He possessed in high degree that sort of modesty and that sort of reserve which 

 are born of a knowledge of men and things, including especially among the latter the obstinate 

 but constant and determinate properties of matter, with which the chemist and the physicist 

 have more particularly to deal. 



