December 9, 1922] 



NA TURE 



787 



The Royal Society Anniversary Meeting. 



C\^ St. Andrew's Day, November 30, the Royal 

 ^-^ Society held its anniversary meeting and Sir 

 Charles Sherrington delivered the customary presi- 

 dential address, in the opening part of which he dealt 

 with matters affecting the society itself and science 

 generally. Speaking of research, Sir Charles Sher- 

 rington referred to the benefaction received last year 

 under the will of the late Miss L. A. Foulerton, who 

 by gift had already founded the Foulerton student- 

 ship. The utilisation of the bequest came under the 

 consideration of a large and representative committee, 

 which recommended the creation of one or more 

 research professorships, within the field of science 

 specified in the bequest. 



The newly instituted research professorship, to- 

 gether with the Mackinnon, Sorby, Tyndall, Moseley, 

 and Foulerton research studentships, all of which are 

 of comparatively recent date, constitute something 

 of a scheme, although they have arisen somewhat 

 desultorily. The studentships with one or more 

 professorships now form a series, extending, at one 

 end, from opportunities for workers of promise to 

 carry their careers towards fulfilment, to, at the other 

 end, provision for men of proved achievement to 

 devote themselves unreservedly to research. A note- 

 worthy feature in the administration of all these 

 research foundations is that the recipient is in no 

 case restricted to a particular institution. The 

 Royal Society has no laboratory of its own, and in 

 consequence takes advantage of the facilities for 

 research already in existence ; thus its function is 

 rather to supplement and reinforce work already in 

 progress. 



Prof. E. H. Starling has been appointed the first 

 Foulerton professor. 



Sir Richard Threlfall and Dr. D. H. Scott, on 

 behalf of a number of subscribers, presented to the 

 society a portrait of Sir Joseph Thomson by Mr. 

 Fidde's Watt. 



In presenting the society's medals. Sir Charles 

 Sherrington referred briefly to the work of each 

 recipient. The awards are as follows : — 



Copley Medal. Sir Ernest Rutherford. — Re- 

 cently, Sir Ernest Rutherford and his pupils have 

 been especially concerned with the deflections of a 

 particles in their passage through matter, and as a re- 

 sult of his experiments he has been led to the view that 

 the positive electric charge in the atom is confined to 

 a minute nuclear region in the atom, that that region 

 comprises nearly the whole mass of the atom, and 

 that it has a charge equal to the electronic charge 

 multiplied by the atomic number of the element. In 

 this work the a particles were located by the scintilla- 

 tions which they produced on a zinc sulphide screen. 

 It was found that when the screen was beyond reach 

 of the original a particles a number, relatively small, 

 of scintillations still remained. In some cases these 

 additional effects are due to hydrogen atoms ejected 

 from the nuclei of the different elements by the bom- 

 barding a particles ; this disruption takes place 

 at the expense of energy latent in the disrupting 

 atom. 



Rumford Medal. Prof. Pieter Zeeman. — Prof. 

 Zeeman's discovery of the splitting up of spectroscopic 

 lines under the influence of magnetic force had 

 important results, among others, that it enabled 

 astronomers to trace magnetic effects at the surface 

 of the sun. Among his subsequent contributions to 

 science is an investigation dealing with the propaga- 

 tion of light in moving bodies. In all earlier experi- 

 ments the dispersion of light in the medium was 

 neglected, and the irregularities in the flow of the 



NO. 2771, VOL. I io] 



liquid constituting the moving body, prevented accur- 

 ate measurements. To obtain greater accuracy 

 Zeeman investigated the effects in solid substances, 

 such as quartz or glass, giving these bodies an oscil- 

 latory velocity, and applying an instantaneous photo- 

 graphic method, the exposure taking place when the 

 velocity was at its maximum. 



Royal Medal. Mr. Joseph Barcroft. — For the 

 last twenty years Mr. Barcroft has been prominent 

 for his researches on the respiratory function of the 

 blood and its relation to the activity of the tissues. 

 He has with various collaborators worked out the 

 changes in the normal consumption of oxygen 

 accompanying functional activity in various repre- 

 sentative organs — salivary gland, kidney, cardiac and 

 skeletal muscle, and liver. He has also worked out 

 and thrown new light on the meaning of the dissocia- 

 tion curve for oxygen exhibited by blood and by pure 

 haemoglobin, and on the influence of dissolved salts 

 upon that curve. 



Royal Medal. Mr. Charles Thomas Rees Wilson. 

 — Previous work having shown the important part 

 played by dust particles in the condensation of super- 

 saturated vapour, Mr. Wilson showed that the ions 

 produced by the passage of X-rays act in a similar 

 manner, thus showing the discrete nature of the 

 ions apart from their electrical effects. Later, he 

 was able on the same principles to render visible, 

 and to photograph, the actual path of an a particle 

 through a gas. More recently, while studying the 

 phenomena of atmospheric electricity, he has measured 

 the surface electrification of the ground, and thence 

 the potential gradient, at any moment, and has also 

 recorded its variation from instant to instant. 

 Observations during the progress of thunderstorms 

 have enabled him to estimate the amount of electricity 

 passing in a lightning flash. 



Davy Medal. Prof. Jocelyn Field Thorpe. — Ethyl 

 cyanoacetate has been investigated by Prof. Thorpe 

 very fully. As a result there appeared an illuminat- 

 ing series of papers on the formation and reactions 

 of imino compounds, giving rise to a variety of 

 derivatives of naphthalene, hydrindene, pyridine, 

 etc., and on the isomerism displayed by the glutaconic 

 acids. His paper on " Spiro Compounds " was the 

 first of a series dealing with the effect produced by 

 the alteration of the tetrahedral angle, consequent 

 on ring formation, on the formation and stability 

 of a second ring joined to the existing ring by a 

 quaternary carbon atom common to both. 



Darwin Medal. Prof. Reginald Crundall Punnett. 

 — Prof. Punnett was the first to find the correct inter- 

 pretation of " coupling and repulsion " in inheritance, 

 now termed " linkage." It was known that sometimes 

 factors belonging to distinct allelomorphic pairs were 

 transmitted as if partially linked, but that also in 

 other families the same factors might show repulsion. 

 Prof. Punnett conceived that these two phenomena 

 must depend on parental combination. Most of the 

 modern interpretations of sex-limited inheritance 

 have grown out of this discover}'. 



Buchanan Medal. Sir David Bruce. — Trypano- 

 soma Brucei, the causal organism of tsetse-fly disease, 

 is so named after its discoverer, Sir David Bruce, 

 who likewise first showed its causal connexion with 

 that disease and with nagana. Bruce took a leading 

 part in the elucidation of trypanosome infections, 

 and in the adoption of counter measures against 

 them, and also traced the incidence in man of 

 Mediterranean fever to transmission through the 

 milk of goats. During the war he carried out the 

 collection and analysis of data regarding tetanus on 



