'52 



NATURE 



[September i8, igig 



research committees, and it is scarcely too much 

 to say that every pound of this large sum has 

 been well expended. The grants are allocated 

 each year by the Committee of Recommendations, 

 which usually consists of the presidents and 

 recorders of the various sections, together with 

 the general officers. Every research committee 

 has thus to present its case for support to an 

 expert body of adjudicators which frequently 

 devotes several hours to dividing up the loooL or 

 so available at the end of each meeting into grants 

 of 5Z. and upwards for research committees put 

 forward by the sectional committees. It has been 

 suggested that in view of other claims upon the 

 revenue of the Association the funds devoted to 

 purposes connected with research should be more 

 closely limited to incidental expenses inasmuch as 

 other funds are now available to assist research 

 itself. However th*is may be, the principle by 

 which men of science themselves allocate grants 

 in aid of research, as they do at a British Associa- 

 tion meeting, is generally accepted to be the best, 

 whether the funds are their own contributions or 

 are entrusted to them for research purposes. The 

 Association is, therefore, to continue the present 

 system by which grants are allocated by the Com- 

 mittee of Recommendations, but the list of grants 

 so made is afterwards to be submitted to the 

 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 

 which will select subjects it can support, and will 

 relieve the Association of the financial obligations 

 relating to such subjects. 



It remains to be seen whether this method will 

 provide the most effective link between the Depart- 

 ment and the Association. A joint Committee, 

 consisting of four members appointed by the 

 General Committee, and four by the Council, is 

 to inquire into the whole matter of the existing 

 provision of grants in aid of scientific research 

 and the organisation of research. No change in 

 the Association's method is contemplated, but 

 there is a feeling that a useful purpose would be 

 served by a survey of what is now being done 

 to promote research through grants in aid by 

 various societies and other bodies, the methods by 

 which such grants are allocated, and the con- 

 ditions to be fulfilled by the recipients. 



Next year's meeting is to be held at Cardiff 

 under the presidency of Prof. W. A. Herdman, 

 who has been succeeded as general secretary by 

 Prof. J. L. Myres. An invitation to meet in 

 Edinburgh in 192 1 was unanimously accepted by 

 the General Committee. The new members of 

 the Council of the Association are : Prof. A. 

 Fowler, Dr. E. H. Griffiths, Prof. A. W. 

 Kirkaldy, and Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. 



SECTION A. 



MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



Opening Address by Prof. A. Gray, M.A., LL.D., 

 F.R.S., President of the Section. 



I HAVE devoted some little time to the perusal of 

 the addresses of my predecessors in this chair. These 

 have a wide range. They include valuable philo- 

 sophical discussions of the nature of scientific know- 

 NO. 2603, VOL. 104] 



ledge and expositions of scientific method, as well as 

 highly instructive re^umis and appreciations of the 

 progress of mathematics and physics. But as this is 

 the first meeting of the British Association since the 

 conclusion of ]xace, I have decided to disregard in 

 the main these precedents, and to endeavour to point 

 out, in the first place, some of the lessons which the 

 war has, or ought to have, taught our country and 

 those who direct its policy, and in particular our- 

 selves, whose vocation it is to cultivate and to teach 

 mathematical and physical science. 



Before proceeding with this task I must refer to 

 the loss which physical science and the British Asso- 

 ciation have suffered this year through the deaths of 

 Prof. Carey Foster and Lord Rayleigh. Both these 

 great physicists were regular in ' attendance at the 

 meetings of the association, aricl they will be greatly 

 missed. 



What Carey Foster was as a man of science, as a 

 teacher, and as a friend of all students of physics has 

 been worthily set forth in the columns of Nature 

 with all the knowledge and affectionate reverence of 

 one who was at once his pupil and his fellow-worker 

 at University College. To that eloquent tribute I will 

 not, though I knew Carey Foster well, venture to 

 add a word. 



It is not for me to appraise here the work of Lord 

 Rayleigh. But I may say that for something like- 

 half a century his name has stood, not only for things 

 that are great in physical discovery, but for sanity of 

 judgment and clarity, elegance, and soundness of 

 treatment of outstanding and difficult problems of 

 mathematical physics. His researches, too, in experi- 

 mental science have been fruitful in results of the 

 utmost importance -in chemistry as well as in phvsics. 

 With him there was no shirking of the toil of rnoho- 

 tonous and systematic observation from day to dav 

 in the pursuit of the greatest attainable accuracy ; 

 take, for example, his work on electrical units. But 

 his influence on applied mathematics has also been 

 enormous, and places him for all time in the foremost 

 rank of the great physical mathematicians, at the head 

 of which stands Isaac Newton. One has onlv to read 

 his treatise on "The Theoi-y of Sound" and his papers 

 on optics and wave theory to find some of the most 

 striking examples in all scientific literature of the 

 working of a mind, not only of the first order of 

 originality, but imbued with a feeling for symmetry 

 of form and clearness of exposition. 



Lord Rayleigh's genius was, it seems to me, 

 essentially intuitive and practical. Though he was 

 not given to any striving after the utmost rigidity 

 of formal proof — which, as he himself remarked, 

 might not be more but less demonstrative to the 

 physicist than physical reasons — no man made fewer 

 mistakes. He is gone, but he has left an inspiring 

 example to his order and to his countrymen of a long 

 life consecrated to the object for which the Roval 

 Society, of which he had been the honoured president, 

 was founded : the furtherance of natural knowledge. 



The part which physical science has plavcd in the 

 conduct of the war on our side has been an important 

 one, but it has by no means been so decisive as it 

 might and ought to have l>een. And here lie the 

 lessons which I think we can -draw from the terrible 

 events which have taken place. Some few people, 

 mostly hostile to or jealous of science, whose vision 

 of facts and tendencies seems to me to be hopelessly 

 obscured bv prejudice, would try to impose on the 

 advance of natural knowlodge and the supposed 

 increased influence of scientific ideas on the minds 

 of men, or, perhaps more precisely, on the diminu- 

 tion of the studv of the so-called humanities, the sole 

 or the main responsibility for the outbreak of war.' 



