GERMANY IN SCIENCE 5 



without the knowledge of the prior work of Isaac Newton, oth- 

 ers taking a less favorable view of the labors of Leibnitz, who it 

 was claimed had "pirated" the work of the great Englishman. 

 Another great name in pure mathematics is that of Pascal, the 

 Frenchman, one of the most precocious intellects of all the ages, 

 who at seventeen brought out his work on conic sections, and 

 somewhat later invented the calculus of probabilities, upon 

 which in part all the work of our modern insurance companies 

 is founded. The system of computing by means of logarithms, 

 indispensable in engineering practice whether on land or sea, 

 was invented by Napier, an Englishman, and in one of its forms 

 by Briggs, another Englishman. While Germans have suc- 

 cessfully used mathematical methods in research, I venture to 

 make the claim that the science of mathematics in its most 

 advanced stages reflects the genius and application of men, 

 who almost without exception were not Germans, and certainly 

 none of whom were Prussians. Among the many applications 

 of mathematical science let us not in this connection forget 

 that Germans universally employ the metric system of weights 

 and measures, which is strictly a French invention, and com- 

 pute the distances marched by their armies in meters, and 

 sell their beer in Munich and Berlin by the liter. 



Let us pass on to the science of Physics, which deals with 

 matter and the various forms of energy resident in it, and 

 therefore treats of gravity, sound, light, heat, magnetism, 

 electricity, and radio-kinematics. 



Leaving out of sight the work of the ancients, and com- 

 ing down to more modern times, the historic evolution of this 

 science recalls the names of William Gilbert, the Englishman 

 who in A.D. 1600 published his work on magnetism; of Torri- 

 celli, the Italian, whose experiments on the air led to the in- 

 vention of the barometer; of Boyle in England and Mariotte 

 in France, who studied the laws controlling the pressure and 

 volume of gases; of Newton, whose discovery and statement 

 of the law of gravity was epoch-making, and whose optical 

 researches were scarcely less brilliant; of Descartes, the French 

 philosopher, who stated the laws governing the refraction of 



