152 SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



Prof. EarlE B. Phelps, Professor of Chemistry at the Hygienic 

 Laboratory, Pubhc Health Service, resigned from the Service on March 

 I, 1919. 



Professor Edward Charles Pickering, professor of astronomy and 

 director of the Harvard College Observatory, and a nonresident mem- 

 ber of the Academy, died at Cambridge on February 3, 1919, in his 

 seventy-third year. Professor Pickering was bom at Boston, Massa- 

 chusetts, July 19, 1846. Excepting the years 1867-1876, during which 

 he was Thayer Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, his entire academic career was spent at Harvard Univer- 

 sity. His astronomical work was especially concerned with the photom- 

 etry and spectrum photography of the light of the stars. He was a 

 member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the Astro- 

 nomical and Astrophysical Society of America, and a member of many 

 American and foreign societies and academies. He had been a mem- 

 ber of the Academy since 1899, and was one of its nonresident vice- 

 presidents in 19 1 5 and 191 6. 



Mr. Richard L. Templin, formerly of the Bureau of Standards, is 

 Engineer of Tests for the Aluminum Compan}^ of America, at New 

 Kensington, Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, resigned in 

 January. Mr. Vrooman will remain for the present in Europe, where 

 he had gone as a member of the Agricultural Commission sent out by 

 the Department. 



Mr. F. A. WerTz, associate chemist at the Bureau of Standards, will 

 leave the Bureau in March to take up research on varnishes and allied 

 products for the Devoe and Raynolds Company, Incorporated, of New 

 York City. 



Brigadier General John Moulder Wilson, U. S. A., retired, died at 

 his home, 1773 Massachusetts Avenue, on February i, 1919, at the age 

 of 81. General Wilson first came to Washington in 1885, as superin- 

 tendent of buildings and grounds, in which capacity he had charge of 

 the construction or completion of many of the now familiar structures 

 of the city. He became Chief of Engineers in 1897, and retired in 

 1903. He had been for the past fifteen years a member of the Board 

 of Managers of the National Geographic Society. 



