650 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



A special meeting of ther Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies was held 

 on January 8, to discuss the future co-ordination of international scientific 

 action. In the end an indeterminate attitude was adopted, it being resolved 

 that the Executive Committee be requested to appoint committees for the 

 purpose of considering the desirability of forming international unions con- 

 nected with the International Research Council, as recommended by the 

 Brussels Conference, or of joining such unions if formed independently. 



At a meeting of Congregation at Oxford, on February 10, a new form 

 of Responsions Statute was accepted under which Greek will no longer be 

 compulsory in responsions, and will not be required at any stage from candi- 

 dates taking Honours in the final schools in Mathematics or Natural Science. 

 This amended form of the Statute has still, however, to pass Convocation, 

 where it is likely to be strongly opposed by the misguided medievalists 

 whose banner bears the legend " Compulsory Greek " ! 



At a Congregation held at the Senate House, Cambridge, on February 14, 

 it was agreed to establish a Professorship of Physical Chemistry. 



Colonel Sir Frederic Nathan, K.B.E., has been appointed Power Alcohol 

 Investigation Officer under the Fuel Research Board of the Department of 

 Scientific and Industrial Research. This appointment has been made as 

 a result of the report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Production 

 and Utilisation of Alcohol for Power and Traction Purposes, which recom- 

 mended the establishment of a small permanent organisation for the investi- 

 gation of this problem. It does not seem likely, however, that any immediate 

 results will follow from the new departure, for, before any research on an 

 extended scale into methods of production and utilisation is undertaken, 

 a " more or less accurate " estimate of the possible sources of alcohol within 

 the Empire and of the cost of its production is to be made. It would seem 

 to be quite obvious by now that power alcohol can be produced in sufficient 

 quantities at a cost far below the present outrageous price of petrol, and 

 that an immediate and extensive research is most urgently necessary. 



The Council of the Glass Research Association has appointed Mr. R. L. 

 Frink, Lancaster, Ohio, U.S.A., to be Director of Research. In a letter 

 to Nature (February 5), Dr. Morris W. Travers comments very unfavourably 

 on the appointment, for he is informed that in the United States " Mr. Frink 

 is not known as a research man or in research circles ; but that he is highly 

 spoken of by practical glass-workers ' as a man of long experience in the 

 window-glass trade, who is accustomed to be called in as first aid for furnace 

 troubles, colour troubles, and like technical difficulties. (This trade he has 

 pursued for some years with success, and his reputation in this domain is 

 among the best. He . . . has gathered together a considerable amount of 

 rough-and-ready wisdom, which has found extensive application in an industry 

 where research laboratories have hardly been thought of until recently.' ' 

 If Dr. Travers' information be correct, the Glass Research Association has 

 made a most unhappy selection. Such a man is not likely to be of the type 

 to work comfortably with, much less direct, a band of Englishmen trained in 

 the methods of scientific research. 



We are pleased to be able to record the gift of several handsome donations 

 towards the cost of University education in this country during the last three 

 months. Messrs. S. B. and J. B. Joel have given £20,000 for the endowment 

 of a University Chair of Physics tenable at the Middlesex Hospital Medical 

 School ; Lord Cowdray has contributed £10,000 towards the sum of £100,000 

 required for the reconstruction of the engineering department at University 

 College, London, and has promised a further £10,000 when the total sub- 

 scribed shall have reached £70,000 ; finally, the Worshipful Company of 

 Goldsmiths has presented £15,000 to the London Hospital Medical College 

 for the endowment of a University Chair of Bacteriology. In America the 

 golden shower which never ceases to fall on Science, Education and the Univer- 



