NOTES 647 



right away out of danger in the tops of the trees the agile 

 gibbon-men leap from branch to branch throwing down sticks 

 (called policies) for the combatants to fight with and excitedly 

 crying " Fight, fight : get your rights, get your rights." Mean- 

 while there is great darkness throughout the whole forest ; 

 for the clouds and the thunders of God roll over it, and we hear 

 His voice saying, " I gave you no rights at all ; I gave you only 

 duties." R. R. 



The Mittag-Leffler Institute (P. E. B. Jourdain, M.A.) 



The Pasteur Institute at Paris always seemed to that eminent mathematician, 

 Prof. G. Mittag-Leffler of Stockholm, the editor of perhaps the most important 

 mathematical journal in the world — Acta Mathematica — a model of what such an 

 Institute should be. It has fulfilled the mission of an establishment intended to 

 be a focus of scientific research far better than any present Academy or univer- 

 sity. Indeed, universities are often too much concerned with the work of teaching 

 to help greatly the progress of science, and Academies suffer under certain other 

 inconveniences Hence arose the magnificent project of Prof. Mittag-Leffler and 

 his wife, which is described in the short pamphlet published at Uppsala in 1916, 

 under the title, Institut Mathetnatique des dpoicx Mittag-Leffler. Prof. Mittag- 

 Leffler and his wife have bequeathed all their property, including their house at 

 Djursholm, near Stockholm, to help, after the death of both of them, in the task 

 of founding an Institute, two of whose objects are to be the development of pure 

 mathematics in the four countries of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway, 

 and to make known and appreciated beyond the frontiers of these countries their 

 contributions in " the most exalted sphere of the life of the mind." Besides the 

 preservation and increase of the library, for which the above-mentioned house was 

 specially built, and which house, to judge from the frontispiece to the pamphlet, is 

 an exceedingly fine structure, the Institute will have the power to grant travelling 

 and other scholarships for work in pure mathematics to young people of either sex 

 belonging to the above four Scandinavian countries. But it would seem that the 

 most important part of the bequest is the provision for a gold medal to be awarded 

 at least once every six years for thoroughly important discoveries in pure mathe- 

 matics. The recipient of a medal will also be presented with a diploma and a 

 finely bound set of Acta Mathematica, and will be invited to come personally to 

 Djursholm for the presentation. For this last purpose he will be granted a 

 travelling indemnity. The other point of international importance seems to be 

 the appointment of a scientific Director and possibly certain other officers : in 

 particular the Director is to be an eminent mathematician who is to devote 

 himself entirely to his own scientific researches, to be, of course, qualified for the 

 post of Director of the Institute, and, from what appears, there is to be no restriction 

 as to his nationality. His position is to be, from a material point of view, " more 

 advantageous than that of any professor of mathematics in one of the universities 

 of the four Scandinavian countries." It is particularly to be noticed that the future 

 Institute will be devoted to the progress of pure mathematics, and that, though it 

 is evident to any thinker that a very large part of the progress of science as a 

 whole depends on the development of pure mathematics, this development has 

 been hitherto almost unnoticed by those benevolent persons who have wished to 

 help the progress of science by gifts of money and other property. 



