May 13, 1922J 



NATURE 



625 



Science in Bohemia. 



By Prof. Bohuslav Brauner, Bohemian (Charles') University, Prague. 



n^'HE years during the war and after were not 

 ^ very favourable to our scientific investigations. 

 The grants for the scientific institutions were reduced 

 by the late Austrian Government in the same degree 

 as the prices of instruments, etc., increased ; many 

 a young man of science has left the High Schools 

 and never returned again. We are now enjoying 

 the fourth year of our liberty and independence, 

 but our country was bled by Austria, so that in 

 order to keep our liberty, which we owe to the 

 magnanimous support (moral only, alas !) of the 

 Allied Powers, our RepubUc had to start its life from 

 the Aery beginning. Paper and printing became so 



Fig. I. — Central Hall of the old University Library, Clementinum, Prague. 



enormously expensive that the two chief scientific 

 societies, the Royal Society of Bohemia, founded in 

 1770, and the Bohemian Academy of Science and 

 Art, founded 1890, are able to print only very short 

 scientific communications. 



I beg, therefore, to place before English men of 

 science a very condensed account of the most 

 prominent papers published during the last few 

 years by Bohemian men of science. (Our German 

 countrymen publish their scientific papers in Germany 

 or in Vienna — as before the war.) 



Astronomy and Astrophysics. — With the 8-inch 

 telescope of the Observatory of the University no 

 important work can be done. Prof. Brauner refers 

 to a communication published in Nature of April 8, 

 1909 (vol. 80, p. 158), entitled "The Gases of the 

 Ring Nebula in Lyra," in which he showed that of 

 the four gases, separated by rotation as visible from 



NO. 2741, VOL. 109] 



Th. Wolf's spectra, the innermost gas (\ = 46o) must 

 be lighter than hydrogen, whereas the outermost 

 gas D (X = 373) will have a density between that of 

 hydrogen and helium. We know to-day that the 

 densities of the gases hydrogen and heUum in nebulae 

 are proportional to their atomic weights. The line 

 \ = 469 in the gas A is now generally regarded as a 

 line in the principal series of helium and identical 

 with the line \ = 4685-90 obtained by Fowler by con- 

 densed spark discharge, but other helium lines, 

 especially \ = 5876 (10), are missing, and so the gas is 

 called " protohehum." That the line ^=373 or 

 X = 3726-1 and \ = 3728-838 really corresponds to a gas 

 heavier than hydrogen and lighter than hehum was 

 proved by Bourget, Fabry and Buisson, who found in 

 1914 that its density is 2-74, whereas Nicholson calcu- 

 lates 2-95. 



Meteorology. — After the Austro-Hungarian Em- 

 pire went to pieces it became the duty of the young 

 Czechoslovak Republic to establish an institute that 

 wquld take charge in its territory of the stations that 

 were previously under the agency of the Vienna and 

 Budapest central meteorological offices. At the 

 beginning of 1920 the Board of Education established 

 the State Meteorological Institute (Prague II. U 

 Karlova 3.), the first duty of which was to re-examine 

 the list of the stations that suffered badly during the 

 war. The central office is now running 120 stations, 

 of which four are first -class observatories, Prague, 

 Milesovka (mountain station, elevation 2550 feet), 

 Brno and Stard Dala. To the central office more 

 than 20 stations send their observations daily, and a 

 report of these is dispatched by " radio " three times 

 daily from Prague. Monthly reviews of the weather 

 are published meanwhile for the whole Repubhc 

 and the climatography of the country is being 

 prepared. The credit for this important work is 

 due to Prof. HanzUk and Director Schneider. 



Physics. — This science does not possess any long 

 tradition in Bohemia, for the first really modern 

 physical institute was built by Prof. Strouhal — who is 

 known for his work " On Steel " carried out with 

 Prof. Barus forty years ago — only in the first decade of 

 this century. His successor was Prof. Bohumil Kucera, 

 whose early death in 192 1 is lamented. His principal 

 work was on radioactivity. This highly talented 

 physicist, a good English scholar, was preparing a 

 text-book on mechanics for English students. Prof. 

 Posejpal is working chiefly on the dependence of 

 the refraction of gases on their pressure. Prof. 

 Macku, one of our best physicists, is studying the 

 oscillation of 2 and 3 conjugated circles. Another 

 promising young physicist is Prof. 2dcek, who investi- 

 gated the influence of the spark on the oscillation 

 frequency and deduced a general formula for it. 

 He has also done important work in radiotelegraphy. 

 The professor of natural philosophy (theoretical 

 physics), ZdviSka, has studied the theory of electro- 

 magnetic waves, especially their flexion on parallel 

 ring-cylinders. 



Inorganic Chemistry. — The war was very un- 

 favourable to chemical investigations : coal was 

 sent to Germany and we were freezing in our labora- 

 tories and lecture rooms. There was no gas-supply 

 during the daytime, platinum, accumulators, copper 

 apparatus, etc., were confiscated by the late Austrian 



