8 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



equal numbers of molecules. In announcing the receipt of 

 this award, Professor Morse sent the following characteristic 

 letter to the Institution, under date of February 29, 1912: 



'^I have just received from the Aceademia Delle Scienze di Torino 

 the announcement that the medal provided for at the centennial 

 celebration of the promulgation of Avogadro's Hypothesis, for the 

 best work in molecular physics which should appear in the three fol- 

 lowing years, i. e., during 1912, 1913, and 1914, has been awarded to 

 my report to the Carnegie Institution on investigations in osmotic 

 pressure. 



"I hasten to inform you, because I am glad to have justified the 

 confidence you have shown in the work and the liberal support you 

 have given it, without which it would have been impossible for me to 

 have succeeded." 



The stately march and the inevitable sequences of time are 

 shown also in the current history of the Institution by pro- 

 vision for retirement, at the end of this calendar 

 ^"pSdSicy.*^^ year, at his request made in December 1918, of 

 the present incumbent in the Presidency, and by 

 the election to this position, on May 25, 1920, of Dr. John C. 

 Merriam, for many years professor of paleontology and historical 

 geology and dean of the faculties in the University of Cahfornia. 

 Thus it happens that within the first two decades after the foun- 

 dation of the Institution it will have had three administrative 

 heads. The terms of office of the first two Presidents are 3 and 16 

 years, respectively; but while these are rather brief in the average 

 as regards the needs of so novel an establishment, they are much 

 above the average tenure of similar positions in the nearest 

 comparable organizations, namely, colleges and universities. It 

 should be recalled, however, that the first President of the 

 Institution was past seventy years of age when he assumed the 

 arduous duties of this office, and that his successor was past 

 fiftj'-five years of age when he undertook to assist in forwarding 

 and in stabilizing the swiftly expanding developments which 

 followed; so that neither had time to make a career in this field, 

 and the best that either could hope to realize was a favorable 

 start and a conservative growth for the new organization. 



