5i8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



States and 1,472 from Great Britain. 

 These figures indicate that there are 

 more scientific men in the United 

 States than in Great Britain, practi- 

 cally all those from the latter country 

 having been included. The work being 

 an Anglo-American compilation, the 

 numbers are not comparable with 

 those of the continental nations, but 

 there is perhaps no reason why any 

 one of these should have been favored 

 in the selection of names. In so far 

 as this is the case, the numbers of sci- 

 entific men of some distinction in the 

 different countries are as follows: 

 Germany, 1,280; France, 423; Austria- 

 Hungary, 236; Italy, 215; Switzer- 

 land, 214; Holland, 155; Sweden, 109; 

 Russia, 97; Denmark, 94; Belgium, 

 90; Norway, 88; Portugal, 49; Spain, 

 41. It thus appears that Germany has 

 three times as many scientific men as 

 France. The population of Germany Is 

 considerably larger, but this was not 

 the case at the time the men were 

 born, they being on the average about 

 50 years of age and practically none 

 of them under forty. The number of 

 men in France over 45 years is only 

 about one million less than in Ger- 

 many, though there are twice as many 

 children in Germany. 



In order to compare the smaller na- 

 tions with the larger we must take ac- 

 count of their size. The numbers of 

 scientific men for each million of the 

 present populations of the different na- 

 tions are as follows: Switzerland, 58; 

 Norway, 37; Denmark, 34; Holland, 

 26; Sweden, 20; Germany, 19; Bel- 

 gium, 12; France, 11; Portugal, 9; 

 Italy, 6; Austria-Hungary, 5; Spain, 

 2; Russia 1. In this comparison the 

 smaller nations show to advantage, and 

 this is a factor that should be kept in 

 mind in any redistribution of empire. 

 Switzerland leads all other nations, fol- 

 lowed by the Scandinavian countries 

 and Holland. Belgium is before 

 France, and Portugal is close to it. 

 In so far as the production of scientific 

 men is a measure of civilization, Aus- 

 tria-Hungary and Italy fare badly and 



Russia is far behind all other nations. 



A study of the distribution of the 

 more distinguished men of science was 

 contributed to this journal (October, 

 1908) by Dr. E. C. Pickering, the di- 

 rector of the Harvard College Observa- 

 tory. Taking the scientific men who 

 were members of at least two foreign 

 academies, they were distributed as 

 follows: Germany, 29, France 12, Eng- 

 land 13, the United States 6, Austria 

 4, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Norway, 

 Denmark and Russia, 3 each. The rec- 

 ognition of scientific eminence is likely 

 to come late in life and these men were 

 mostly old; half of the six distin- 

 guished Americans — Agassiz, Hill and 

 Xewcomb — have since died. The pres- 

 ent distribution of the foreign mem- 

 bers of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences is as follows: German 18, Great 

 Britain 11, France 4, Holland 4, Rus- 

 sia and Sweden, two each, Austria, 

 Italy, Norway and Switzerland, one 

 each. Here again France does not com- 

 pare favorably with Germany. Among 

 its four representatives are two distin- 

 guished mathematicians, Darboux and 

 Picard, the other two being Deslan- 

 dres, the astronomer, and Barrois, the 

 paleontologist. They are scarcely the 

 peers of the four Dutch representatives, 

 Kapteyn, Lorenz, de Vries and van der 

 Waals, and are apparently less distin- 

 guished than the Germans and the 

 English. 



If we select the greatest men from 

 the list compiled by Dr. Pickering or 

 from the foreign membership of the 

 National Academy, it is not easy lo 

 find any who can be placed beside 

 Helmholtz or Pasteur, whose portraits 

 happen to be reproduced in this place, 

 it may be an error of perspective that 

 those nearer to us seem smaller. But 

 when Germany names its greatest men 

 it goes back to Goethe and Kant, and 

 the scientific men who have died or 

 have ceased their active work appear 

 to be greater than those who are now 

 filling the chairs in the universities. 



This does not mean that present 

 work in science is less important than 



