90 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



" The committee on the Barnard medal respectfully recommend that Prof. 

 Henri Becquerel, of Paris, member of the Institute, be recommended by the 

 National Academy of Sciences to the trustees of Columbia University as the 

 proper recipient of the Barnard medal to be awarded next June. In making this 

 recommendation the committee has borne in mind not only the important dis- 

 coveries in the field of radio-activity made by Professor Becquerel during the last 

 five years, but also the fact that he was the original discoverer of the so-called 

 dark rays from uranium, which discovery has been the basis of subsequent 

 research into and of our present knowledge of the laws of radio-activity." "^ 



Since the formation of the International Association of 

 Academies, of which the National Academy became a member, 

 the interest in the national and international cooperation in 

 research work has greatly increased, and the Academy has 

 participated in many undertakings of broad scope which have 

 been beneficial in the promotion of science. Mention has al- 

 ready been made of the work of the International Seismological 

 Association and the International Union for Cooperation in 

 Solar Research. In 1906, a proposal was made to the Academy 

 that it should lend its aid and patronage to a scheme for national 

 cooperation in chemical research. The primary object of the 

 plan was to arouse interest in and to provide means for a syste- 

 matic attack on the problem of the free-energy changes which 

 accompany chemical reactions. " The principle of the second 

 law of energetics," remarked the promoter of this enterprise in 

 1906, " that any change in the state of a system, whether physical 

 or chemical, is capable of producing under the most favorable 

 conditions a definite quantity of work is one whose importance 

 has been extensively recognized within the last few years. This 

 importance arises not only from the direct significance from a 

 scientific and technical standpoint of this maximum quantity of 

 work obtainable from any physical change or chemical reaction, 

 but also from the fact that from its value alone can be directly 

 computed the equilibrium conditions of the chemical reaction in 

 question, the direction in which under specified conditions it 

 will take place, and the electromotive force of any voltaic cell 

 in which the reaction goes on reversibly." "^ 



"'Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1905, p. 13. 

 "Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1906, p. 19. 



