AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



543 



lines those who were assigned the lower posi- 

 tion. Thus there was one man whose higher 

 position was in mathematics, but who was 

 also given a position in physics, and there 

 were eleven men who are primarily physicists 

 and secondarily mathematicians. There are 

 93 men who have a position in two sciences, 

 five who have a position in three sciences and 

 one who has a position in four sciences. It 

 thus appears that about one tenth of our sci- 

 entific men do work of some importance in 

 more than one of the twelve sciences here 

 defined. 



TABLE V. THE HT7MBEBS OF THOSE WHO WEBB AS- 

 SIGNED A POSITION IN MOBE THAN ONE SCIENCE 



The chief interest of the table is that it 

 gives a certain measure of the relationships 

 of the sciences. Thus mathematics, physics 

 and astronomy, on the one hand, and zoology, 

 anatomy and physiology, on the other, are the 

 most closely interrelated groups. This might 

 have been foreseen, but the table gives the 

 definite relations. There are but few who are 

 anatomists only, whereas botany is the science 

 which is the least likely to be combined with 

 any other. One of the most serious obstacles 

 to the advancement of science is the lack of 

 men who are expert both in an exact and in a 

 natural or biological science. 



There are in all the leading countries acad- 

 emies of science, whose membership is sup- 



posed to consist of their most eminent, scien- 

 tific men, and one of the principal functions 

 of such academies appears to be the election 

 of members as an honor. The methods of 

 selection used in this research are more ac- 

 curate than those of any academy of sciences, 

 and it might seem that the publication of the 

 list would be as legitimate as that of a list 

 of our most eminent men selected by less ade- 

 quate methods. But perhaps its very accuracy 

 would give it a certain brutality. 



Of the first hundred scientific men on the 

 list who are eligible, 61 are included among 

 the 97 members of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, and of the first 30 men on the list 28 

 are members of the academy. The elections 

 to the academy tend to follow the list pretty 

 closely in the order in which men are arranged 

 in the separate sciences usually falling within 

 the probable error of position. But the acad- 

 emy has no method of comparing performance 

 in difference sciences, and if one science has 

 less than its proper representation, the dis- 

 parity is likely to increase rather than to de- 

 crease. Thus there are in the country about 

 half as many astronomers as botanists, but 

 there are twice as many astronomers in the 

 academy. The second principal variation in 

 the membership of the academy is due to the 

 fact that men do not always retain the posi- 

 tions that they hold when elected. Apart 

 from the somewhat greater accuracy, the su- 

 periority of this list consists in the assignment 

 of probable errors of position. Thus the prob- 

 able error at the close of the first hundred is 

 about 25 places, that is, there are about 25 

 men not in an ideal academy of a hundred, 

 whose chances of belonging there are at least 

 one in four. A list such as this would also 

 give us academies of any desired size the 

 sixty most eminent men of science, as in the 

 Paris Academy, the hundred or thereabouts 

 as in the National Academy, or the 450 or 

 thereabouts, as in the Eoyal Society. 



While under existing conditions of senti- 

 ment, the publication of a list of our thousand 

 leading men of science in the order of merit 

 with the probable errors would not be toler- 



