90 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
Dr. Gerhard F. Schilling, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, and the Director 
participated in conferences of the Technical Panel on the Harth Satel- 
lite Program of the National Academy of Sciences’ U.S. National 
Committee for the International Geophysical Year, as well as meet- 
ings of various working groups of the Special Committee on Space 
Technology of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. 
Dr. Luigi G. Jacchia, at the end of May, visited various Caribbean 
islands to make an on-the-spot investigation of the demise of Satellite 
1957 Beta, from reports of eyewitnesses. 
The Director served as delegate to the Eleventh General Assembly 
of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Toronto, 
last September, and was a participant in the Conference on America’s 
Human Resources to Meet the Scientific Challenge, sponsored in 
February 1958 by the President’s Committee on Scientists and En- 
gineers at New Haven, Conn. He was a contributor to the Second 
Annual Air Force Office of Scientific Research Astronautics Sympo- 
sium at Denver, Colo., in April 1958, presenting a paper “On the 
Lunar Dust Layer.” 
In national science and defense, the Director was called to testify, 
on April 21, 1958, before the U.S. House of Representatives Select 
Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, on the needs for 
the United States of America in space exploration. He served as 
consultant to the U.S. Office of Naval Research and to the U.S. Air 
Weather Service on problems related to the coming Age of Space. 
He has been elected chairman of the Technical Panel on Rocketry 
and is a member of the Technical Panel on the Earth Satellite Pro- 
gram of the International Geophysical Year; chairman of the Panel 
on the Atmosphere, Scientific Advisory Board to the Air Force; mem- 
ber of the Committee on Cosmic and Terrestrial Relationships of the 
American Geophysical Union; and member of the working group on 
Space Surveillance, National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. 
The Director is editor of the Smithsonian Contributions to Astro- 
physics and of a new international publication: Planetary and Space 
Physics. 
DIVISION OF RADIATION AND ORGANISMS 
Research on photomechanisms in plants continued, with special 
emphasis on those growth responses controlled by low levels of red 
and blue radiant energy. Further investigations by Dr. William 
H. Klein and Victor Elstad were made of the red, far-red mechanism 
that controls photomorphogenic processes in seed germination, seed- 
ling development, flowering, and other related responses. In these 
responses, the red (620-680 mu) induces the growth response, which 
can be nullified by subsequent exposure to the far-red (710-730 my). 
