66 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



President of the National Academy of Sciences. After the death 

 of Joseph Henry, the President in 1880 appointed President 

 Barnard of Columbia College as his successor. In spite of the 

 conscientious efforts of the trustees to apply the income of the 

 fund to the purposes intended by Professor Tyndall, certain 

 practical difficulties defeated their efforts, 55 and in the course of 

 a number of years the principal and accumulated interest 

 together amounted to about $32,000. The circumstances were 

 communicated to Professor Tyndall who thereupon modified 

 his donation and established three graduate fellowships, each 

 with a fund of about $11,000, in the department of physics in 

 Harvard College, Columbia College and the University of 

 Pennsylvania for the stimulation of original research, and the 

 advancement of physical science in the United States. 



1888-1892 



The first Lawrence Smith Medal was awarded in 1888 to 

 Professor Hubert A. Newton, Professor of Mathematics at 

 Yale University, " in recognition of his eminent services in the 

 investigations of the orbits of meteors." The presentation was 

 made on the evening of April 18, 1888, in the lecture- room of 

 the National Museum, the President of the Academy, Pro- 

 fessor O. C. Marsh, presiding. The first and last paragraphs 

 of the report of the committee on the award, which is printed in 

 full in volume one of the Proceedings of the Academy. 58 are 

 as follows: 



" Professor Newton's study of the subject extends over a long series of years, 

 and has led to results of very great popular interest as well as scientific impor- 

 tance. Meteors in the sense in which the word is now used have from the 

 remotest ages attracted the attention of mankind. Observations of greater or 

 less value have long been accumulating. Chemistry had shown that meteoric 

 bodies which fall upon the earth contain no element not already known as a con- 

 stituent of the crust of the earth, but astronomy had not yet brought the wanderers 

 of the heavens into a system and shown that they are moving in definite orbits and 



M See Smithsonian Report for 1885, part i, pp. 25, 26. 

 M Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., vol. i, p. 308. 



