382 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



ship; from Gamaliel Bradford, declining Fellowship. The Cor- 

 responding Secretary read a letter from Professor F. H. Newell 

 on behalf of the Committee on Reconstruction Problems of the 

 National Research Council suggesting the cooperation of scientific 

 societies in the study of post-bellum problems. This letter was 

 referred .to the Council. 



The Chair announced the following deaths : — Grove Karl 

 Gilbert, Class II., Section 1; Frederick Remsen Hutton, Class I., 

 Section 4; Charles Card Smith, Class III., Section 3; George IMary 

 Searle, Class I., vSection 1; Arlo Bates, Class III., Section 4; Wil- 

 liam Leshe Hooper, Class I., Section 2; James Jackson Putnam, 

 Class II., Section 3; Samuel Wendell Williston, Class II., Section 1 ; 

 and Sir James Augustus Henry INIurray, Foreign Honorary ]Mem- 

 ber in Class III., Section 4. 



Biographical notices were presented as follows: Francis Hum- 

 phreys Storer by Charles W. Eliot, Francis Blake by Charles R. 

 Cross, and William Bullock Clark by B. K. Emerson. 



The Rumford Medals were presented to Professor Percy Wil- 

 liams Bridgman, of Cambridge, j\Iass., for his Thermodynamical 

 Researches at Extremely High Pressures. 



Professor Cross, Chairman of the Rumford Committee, stated 

 the grounds on which the award was made, as follows: — 



"The researches of Professor Bridgman for which the Academy 

 has awarded to him the Rumford Premium comprehend an 

 extended and remarkable investigation of the thermodynamical 

 properties of water and to a certain extent, of other liquids, imder 

 unprecedentedly great pressures. This involved a study of the 

 relation between temperatures, ^•olumes, and jiressures, the latter 

 through an extremely great range. 



The position of these studies in the history of scientific research 

 will be best appreciated through a brief reference to historical data. 

 In Kifil Boyle discovered the "Law" now bearing his name that 

 the volume of a gas through a great range varies inversely as the 

 pressure upon it. ]\lariotte in France in KiTfi independently 

 made and published the same discovery. Charles and, shortly 

 afterward, (Jay Lussac in 1802 discovered the facts regarding the 

 expansion of ordinary gases with rise of tenijH-rature. viz: that for 

 difl'('r("iit uascs for each degree through a large range this is the 



