474 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



has flora and fauna which, in their richness and variation, are quite unusual in 

 such high latitudes, but the scientific details are comparatively unknown. 



In order that a research programme relating to the physiological effects of 

 cold and low pressure may be carried out, the Department of Scientific and 

 Industrial Research is rendering assistance to Dr. Kellas in an expedition to 

 Mount Kamet in the Himalayas. This explorer proposes to reach a height of 

 25,000 ft. or so with the aid of oxygen mountaineering outfits, and he is being 

 provided by the Department with the necessary equipment for his research. 



It is reported in the daily press that Amundsen has been forced to leave 

 Nome in Alaska for the north with a crew of three and an Eskimo cook. The 

 other members of his crew struck for a wage of ;^300 a month ! 



The centenary of Oersted's discovery of the magnetic field associated 

 with an electric current was celebrated at Copenhagen on August 31 and 

 September i by anniversary meetings at the Town Hall and University. His 

 experiments would seem to have been made in the winter 1819-20, in the 

 fourteenth year of his appointment as Professor of Physics in the University 

 of Copenhagen and seven years after he first turned his mind to the subject. 

 His paper describing the work bears the date July 21, 1820, and recognition 

 of its importance was immediate, for he was elected For. Mem. R.S., and 

 awarded the Copley medal four months later. It is recorded also that 

 Ampere, having heard of the matter on September 11, 1820, published the first 

 of his classical papers on electromagnetism on September 18. 



The serious cost of scientific publications, which has already been referred 

 to in these pages, is dealt with very sympathetically by the Scientific and 

 Industrial Research Committee. It is suggested that the societies should take 

 common action by placing before the Government a definite statement of the 

 extent to which the national interest is made to suffer by the present increase 

 in the cost of printing. In Sweden government aid has already been pro- 

 vided. For example, the Swedish Medical Association is to receive 5,000 

 crowns towards the cost of publication of its three journals (a fortnightly, a 

 quarterly, and the Transactions) . Three journals devoted to hygiene are given 

 from 1,000 to 1,500 crowns and four specialist journals from 500 to 1,200. In 

 return each journal has to donate a number of copies to the university libraries. 



We have received a cutting from the Karnataka (July 24, 1920) referring 

 to the appointment of a successor to Sir Alfred Bourne, Director of the 

 Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, from which it would appear that 

 the appointment was to be given to an English administrator, who has no 

 experience whatever of scientific work. Such an appointment in the leading 

 scientific institution in India is really deserving of the strongest protest, but 

 is, after all, only one more example of the incompetence of our classically 

 trained bureaucracy. In this particular instance, however, there is evidently 

 more involved than the question of official v. scientific administration, 

 because it is stated that the European professorial staff was in favour of the 

 proposed appointment. In the absence of any information concerning the local 

 conditions, all that can be said is that it is very regrettable that the scientific 

 staff could not agree to support the cause of a more appropriate candidate. 



In a letter to Nature (September 30, 1920) Messrs. J. N. Bronsted and G. 

 Hevesy of the Polytechnic High School, Copenhagen, state that they have 

 succeeded in separating from ordinary mercury two isotopes, one having a 

 specific gravity -999980 and the other 1-000031 as compared with mercury 

 as standard. This separation was obtained by evaporating mercury at a 

 low pressure and condensing the evaporated atoms on a cooled surface. The 

 rate of evaporation is inversely proportional to the square root of the atomic 

 weight of the isotopes, so that a partial separation should be obtained. The 

 densities were measured with a pyknometer, the accuracy claimed being 

 greater than one in a million. 



A, W. Hull of the General Electric Co., Schenectady, N.Y., gives in Science 



