September 2, 1922] 



NA TURE 



33i 



American educational relations, both through its 

 management of exchanges of scholarships and fellow- 

 ships, and through collaborating with the French 

 Ministry of Public Instruction in working out equiva- 

 lencies of French and American academic records. 

 At present 50 scholarships are offered through the 

 Council by American universities and colleges to 

 French students, while 40 are offered by French 

 universities and lycees to Americans. As regards 

 the establishment of what the French call " equiva- 

 lences de scolarite," the Council's standing committee 

 on international educational relations prepared a 

 report (published last January) which has been 

 accepted by the Conseil Superieur de 1' Instruction 

 Publique as the basis for the admission of American 

 students to candidacy for the State doctorates. 

 The council has also a standing committee on College 

 Standards which is engaged in devising means for 

 effecting a general unification of procedure on the 

 part of the several national and sectional accrediting 

 bodies, and it has formulated already a list of basic 

 requirements for admission to a list of accredited 

 colleges. Another standing committee is busy with 

 the question of tariffs on educational supplies ; 

 another is about to present a first instalment of its 

 report on educational finance ; another is investigat- 

 ing how the established principles of " academic 

 freedom " may best be safeguarded and their general 

 application be promoted in the face of threatened 

 restrictions by legislation of the freedom of teaching 

 and investigation ; while another is to undertake a 

 registration in the form of a directory, of college and 

 university teaching personnel, to include at the out- 

 set at least 25,000 names. 



The programme of lectures and classes for teachers 

 during the session 1922-23, organised by the London 

 County Council, has recently been issued. Teachers 

 from outside the London area are admitted to the 

 lectures on payment of a small additional fee. The 

 handbook is drawn up on similar lines to those of 

 previous years, the lectures being divided into groups 

 according to subject. Among the science lectures 

 there are several interesting courses, among which are 

 the following : Prof. C. Spearman and the Rev. F. 

 Aveling, ten lectures on the experimental investiga- 

 tion of children ; Mr. Cyril Burt, three courses of 

 lectures on psychology and education ; Prof. O. W. 

 Richardson, ten lectures on modern views of matter 

 and radiation ; Prof. F. E. Fritch, five lectures on 

 the vegetation of the London area ; Prof. A. Smithells, 

 one lecture on the atom ; Sir William Bragg, five 

 lectures on the constitution of matter ; Dr. R. S. 

 Clay, ten lectures on science in elementary schools ; 

 Mr. A. L. Leach, eight lectures on the geology and 

 geography of the London district ; Prof. J. Arthur 

 Thomson, three lectures on the progress of evolution ; 

 and Prof. T. P. Nunn, six lectures on Einstein's theory 

 of relativity and its educational bearings. In addi- 

 tion to these courses, there will be four special 

 lectures — on teaching children astronomy, by Sir 

 Frank W. Dyson ; on the significance of crystal 

 analysis, by Sir William Bragg ; on the relation be- 

 tween the health and character of the school child, 

 by Prof. Karl Pearson ; and on the drama of animal 

 life, by Prof. J. Arthur Thomson. The value of these 

 special lectures by recognised authorities on their 

 own subjects can scarcely be over-emphasised. 

 Courses are also being organised in geography and 

 in the teaching of arithmetic and mathematics. 

 Copies of the handbook of the lectures, with applica- 

 tion forms, can be obtained from the Education 

 Officer at the County Hall, Westminster Bridge, 

 S.E.i. 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



September 3, 1854, Henry Fourdrinier died. — 

 Born in Lombard Street, London, in 1766, Four- 

 drinier, with his brother Sealy, succeeded to his 

 father's business of paper-making, and at the begin- 

 ning of last century endeavoured to introduce the 

 continuous paper-making machine invented in 1799 

 by the Frenchman, Louis Robert. He spent some 

 60,000/. improving and making new machinery, but 

 ultimately became bankrupt. The subsequent success 

 of the paper-making machine was largely due to 

 Bryan Donkin, but Fourdrinier's pioneering work 

 was acknowledged in 1840 by a Parliamentary grant 

 to him of 7000/. 



September 3, 1874. Sir John Rennie died. — The 

 first British civil engineer since the days of Sir Hugh 

 Myddleton (1560-1631) to receive the honour of 

 knighthood, Rennie was trained under his father, 

 the builder of Waterloo Bridge, and was responsible 

 for the building of London Bridge and the completion 

 of the Plymouth Breakwater. He was engineer to 

 the Admiralty, carried out many important harbour 

 works, and in 1845-1848 was president of the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers. 



September 3, 1895. Ralph Hart Tweddell died. — 

 One of the pioneers in the application of hydraulic 

 pressure to machine tools, Tweddell brought out his 

 hydraulic rivetting machine in 1866. His methods 

 reduced the cost of rivetting to one-seventh that of 

 hand work. Used first by Armstrong at Newcastle 

 in 1871, Tweddell's hydraulic machines were ex- 

 tensively adopted three years later in the French 

 dockyard at Toulon. 



September 5, 1885. Walter Bentley Woodbury 

 died. — Originally an engineer, Woodbury spent some 

 years in Australia,- Java, and Batavia, and became 

 known for his successful work with the collodion 

 process in photography. Returning to England in 

 1863, he invented the Woodbury-type process and 

 patented many improvements in connexion with 

 photography. 



September 6, 1842. Jean Baptiste Van Mons died. 

 — The founder of the journal de chemie et de physique, 

 and a prolific writer, Van Mons at a time when the 

 nations of Europe were at enmity, performed a 

 valuable service by propagating abroad a knowledge 

 of the discoveries of Lavoisier, Volta, Vauquelin, 

 Chenevix and others. He was born in Brussels in 

 1765, became a pharmacist, and for twenty years was 

 professor of chemistry and agriculture in the Uni- 

 versity of Lou vain. 



September 7, 1870. Cowper Phipps Coles died. — 

 Flag-lieutenant to Admiral Lyons during the Crimea 

 War, and in 1855 captain of the paddle sloop Strom- 

 boli, Coles first became known for his construction 

 of a gun raft. Taking up the study of naval archi- 

 tecture he carried out experiments on mounting guns 

 in cupolas, and he was afterwards responsible for the 

 design of the ill-fated turret vessel H.M.S. Captain 

 which capsized off Cape Finisterre on the night of 

 September 7, 1870, Coles being on board at the time. 

 September 8, 1761. Bernard Forest de Belidor 

 died. — Known principally for his writings on hy- 

 draulics, Belidor as a French military engineer made 

 many experiments on the explosive power of gun- 

 powder, became inspector of artillery and held a post 

 in the arsenal at Paris. His " Architecture Hydraul- 

 ique," long regarded as a standard work, was first 

 published in 1753. while Navier published a new 

 edition with notes in 1S19. 



E. C. S. 



NO. 2757, VOL. I io] 



