May 13, 1920] 



NATURE 



hZl 



ton. These officers are appointed for but one year 

 at a time, and it is expected that most of the 

 offices (chairmen of divisions, etc.) will be filled 

 in rotation by men drawn from the scientific 

 faculties of the universities, the staffs of large 

 scientific institutes, and the research laboratories 

 maintained by the industries. 



Although during the war the Council was largely 

 supported by the Government, it is now entirely 

 supported by private funds. A gift of 5,000,000 

 dollars has recently been made to it by the Car- 

 negie Corporation. Part of this money, perhaps 

 a million dollars, will be used to erect a building 

 in Washington for the offices, conference rooms, 

 etc., of the Council and the National Academy of 

 Sciences, and the remainder will constitute a per- 

 manent endowment for the Council. This endow- 

 ment will provide for the administrative expenses 

 of the organisation, leaving the funds necessary 

 to aid in the support of the large co-operative 

 scientific projects of research, which the Council 

 hopes to stimulate or establish, to be found, as 

 the needs require, from wealthy men or philan- 

 thropic foundations interested in the promotion of 

 the investigation of the fundamentals of science 

 and from the industries interested in promoting 

 the extension of scientific applications. 



The Council as at present organised includes 

 thirteen divisions, seven representing the various 

 major lines of science and technology, and six 

 representing general relations. The first seven are 

 divisions of the physical sciences, engineering, 

 chemistry and chemical technology, geology and 

 geography, the medical sciences., biology and 

 agriculture, and anthropology and psychology. 

 The general relations group includes a division of 

 foreign relations, a Government division (including 

 representatives of each of the major scientific 

 bureaux included in the Government Departments 

 of War, Navy, Commerce, Labour, Agriculture, 

 State, and Treasury), a division of States rela- 

 tions, one of educational relations interested espe- 

 cially in the -research conditions and activities in 

 the colleges and universities of the country, a 

 division of research extension especially devoted 

 to the extension of research to the industries, and 

 a research information service intended to act as 

 a general national clearing-house for information 

 concerning the scientific personnel and scattered 

 research work of the country. 



Affiliated with these various divisions are many 

 special committees and sub-committees which con- 

 cern themselves with various special phases and 

 specific projects of scientific investigation. The 

 present number of these committees approximates 

 fifty. There is also a special Research Fellowship 

 Board, which has at its disposal through the 



period from May i, 1919, to June 30, 1925, the 

 sum of 500,000 dollars, appropriated by the Rocke- 

 feller Foundation for the Maintenance of National 

 Research Fellowships in Physics and Chemistry. 

 Thirteen of these fellowships have so far been 

 instituted. 



The National Research Council is thus neither 

 a great operating scientific laboratory nor an 

 organisation possessing large funds from which 

 to make direct gifts to individual scientific 

 investigators or scientific laboratories, but an in- 

 stitution for the purposes of stimulating and 

 organising scientific research in America, and of 

 promoting international scientific relations in all 

 possible ways. It is specially interested in organ- 

 ising scientific effort along co-ordinated co-opera- 

 tive lines. Tt hopes to encourage vigorous attack 

 on major problems too large and many-sided for 

 the individual investigator working alone, and 

 often requiring the co-operation of numerous in- 

 vestigators and laboratories representing several 

 different but allied lines of science. In the applica- 

 tions of science it is especially interested in such 

 problems as bear directly on the promotion of the 

 national strength and well-being. 



Among the many projects now in course of 

 organisation or actual development are an exten- 

 sive study of food and nutrition in charge of a 

 committee including many of the leading American 

 physiological chemists and experts in human and 

 animal nutrition; a study of high explosives, 

 begun during the war; the preparation of critical 

 compendia of physical and chemical constants ; a 

 study of the fundamental scientific problems of 

 baking, of ceramics, of steel alloys, of synthetic 

 drugs, of the chemistry of colloids, of sewage dis- 

 posal, of forestry, of fertilisers, etc. An extensive 

 investigation of tropical biology, including espe- 

 cially tropical medicine, is in course of organisa- 

 tion. A detailed survey of the research conditions 

 in all the colleges and universities of the 

 country, in which research work is now being done 

 or probably can be done in the near future, is in 

 active progress. A committee on mental measure- 

 ments has recently completed an elaborate series 

 of trials of group tests on several thousand chil- 

 dren, and has prepared, and is about to publish, 

 a set of recommended tests for use for classifica- 

 tion and grading in the common schools of the 

 country. These tests are adapted from the sets 

 developed by the Council's special psychological 

 committee on Army tests during the war. Alto- 

 gether, the Council is getting under way a good 

 deal of important research work, and promises 

 to be an organisation of much influence in the 

 promotion of American activity in the advance- 

 ment of science. 



Obituary. 



Marlborough R. Pryor. 



SOME fifty years ago Marlborough Robert 

 Pryor, who died at Weston Park, Stevenage, 

 on April 3, was well known in scientific circles at 

 Cambridge, and seemed likely to rise to a high 

 NO. 2637, VOL. lO";! 



position in those studies. He was a man of many 

 interests and great adaptability of mind, who, 

 though he was rather early diverted to executive 

 business, never lost his interest in those parts of 

 it which were connected with science. Educated 



