,84 



NATURE 



[March 17, 192 1 



selected to fill an important post in the new 

 National Physical Laboratory at Tokyo on his 

 return from Europe. His intelligence and charm 

 of manner had gained him many friends both in 

 this country and Japan, who deplore the untimely 

 end of such a young life so full of promise of 

 achievement in science. E. R. 



The death of Georges Humbert on January 22 

 has removed a mathematician of exceptional 

 powers. Humbert may be compared with Clebsch, 

 because, although he may not have invented a new 

 mathematical engine, he showed unexpected uses 



of those already provided. In his hands Abel's 

 theorem and Poincar^'s researches on Fuchsian 

 functions became magic keys to unlock the 

 treasures of geometry, and give us concrete and 

 elegant images of analytical ideas. One of his 

 most characteristic works is his memoir on hyper- 

 elliptic surfaces, for which he obtained the Bordin 

 prize, and which was published in Liouville's 

 Journal. In his later years he was attracted by 

 the theory of numbers, and published several 

 papers on arithmetical forms. Humbert gave lec- 

 ; tures at the Ecole Polytechnique, and also at the 

 1 College de France. M. 



Notes. 



Dr." H. K. Anderson, Master of Gonville and 

 Caius College, Cambridge ; Prof. W. M. Bayliss, 

 professor of general phvsiology, University College, 

 London ; and Sir William H. Bragg, Quain professor 

 of physics, University of London, have been elected 

 members of the Athenaeum Club under the provisions 

 of the rule of the club which empowers the annual 

 election by the committee of a certain number of 

 persons "of distinguished eminence in science, litera- 

 ture, the arts, or for public service." 



On Monday last, March 14, the Albert medal of 

 the Royal Society of Arts was presented to Prof. 

 Albert Michelson, foreign member of the Royal 

 Society, for his discovery of a natural constant which 

 has provided a basis for a standard of length. The 

 award was made last year, but the actual presenta- 

 tion was deferred until Prof. Michelson could come 

 to England to receive it. In the absence of H.R.H. 

 the Duke of Connaught, the president, the medal was 

 presented by Mr. Alan Campbell Swinton, the chair- 

 man of the council of the society. By the use 

 of his interferometer Prof. Michelson found the 

 length of the Paris standard metre to be 1,553,164 

 times the wave-length of the red line of cadmium, 

 and his calculations have since been verified as 

 accurate within a limit of error of one wave-length, 

 or say two-millionths of a millimetre. To the society 

 the award is of especial interest, because in 1774 it 

 offered a prize for an invariable standard of length, 

 and up to the present date there has never been found 

 a successful competitor. As the Albert medal is limited 

 to practical applications of science, the society could 

 not recognise any other of Prof. Michelson 's scientific 

 discoveries, but its council was doubtless influenced 

 by an appreciation of their extent and value. His 

 construction of optical gratings, determination of the 

 velocity of light, and precise experiments on the rela- 

 tive motion of aether and matter are of fundamental 

 importance, and his Echelon spectroscope has provided 

 physicists and astronomers with a most valuable instru- 

 ment of high resolving power. Several years ago Prof. 

 Michelson used his interferometer to measure the dia- 

 meters of the four chief satellites of Jupiter, and sug- 

 gested its application to the fixed stars. This has 

 now been done at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and 

 a short account of the remarkable results obtained 

 was given in Nature of January 20, p. 676. 



. NO. 2681, VOL. 107] 



The magnetic research steamer Carnegie, of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, returned to San 

 Francisco on February 22 after a scientific expedi- 

 tion to the Indian Ocean, West Australia, New Zea- 

 land, Tahiti, and Fanning Islands to investigate the 

 magnetic condition of the earth over ocean areas. 

 The only information as to the results of the voyage 

 yet announced is that the Royal Company Island was 

 sought for in vain. The Royal Company Island or 

 Islands figured on charts of the Southern Ocean for 

 inore than a century, having been reported by the 

 Spanish ship Rafaelo about 1776 in 49° S., 142° E. 

 Bellingshausen in the Russian Antarctic Expedition 

 appointed the island as a rendezvous for his two ships 

 in January, 1820, but both vessels sought it in vain. 

 Dumont D'Urville on the French .Antarctic Expedi- 

 tion in 1840 also searched for the island, but could 

 not find it ; still, the name remained on the charts in 

 various positions between 49° and 53° 30' S. aiid 

 between 141° and 145° E. The re-discovery of Bouvet 

 Island by the Valdivia in 1898, after Cook in 1772 and 

 1775 and Moore in 1845 had passed within twenty 

 miles without sighting it in their searches, re- 

 awakened doubts as to the non-existence of other 

 islands. reported in the Southern Ocean and never seen 

 again. Capt. J. K. Davis in the Nimrod of Shackleton's 

 expedition in 1909, and again in the Aurora of Maw- 

 son's expedition in 1912, sailed over most of the 

 assigned positions and got soundings of more than 

 2000 fathoms in the vicinity. The work of the 

 Carnegie should be held to have completed the difficult 

 task of proving a negative, and so to clear the chart 

 of another iceberg. 



The Daily Mail of Saturday last, March 12, pub- 

 lishes a message from its Paris correspondent referring 

 to a prediction by the Abb6 Moreux that the next 

 fourteen years will be relatively drv in Western 

 Europe. The alternation of wet and dry periods of 

 about seventeen years each referred to in the report, 

 and in the short leading article upon it, is, however, 

 by no means a new discovery. Indeed, a cycle of 

 precisely the same length and type as that now an- 

 nounced was mentioned more than three hundred 

 years ago by Francis Bacon, and in our own time 

 Prof. E. Briickner, of Berne, has traced its effects in 

 a variety of meteorological phenomena. The Abbe 

 Moreux may have found a new weather-period, but 



