342 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— A, B. 



Section III deals with technical applications of the problem, and mentions, inter 

 alia, setting of wool, finishing processes, and the effect of humidity on the fading of 

 dyestuffs on woollen fibres. The influence of moisture content on the production of 

 bacteria is discussed. 



27. Reports of Committees. 



Department of Mathematics. 



28. Mr. F. P. Ramsey. — Mathematical Logic. 



The paper explains certain problems of fundamental importance to mathematics 

 which were left unsolved in Principia Mathematica, and gives a critical account of 

 theories by which Weyl, Brouwer, Hilbert, Wittgenstein, and the author have tried 

 severally to meet the outstanding difficulties. 



29. Mr. M. H. A. Newman. — Combinatory Topology. 



The establishment of the analysis situs of n-dimensional spaces on principlea 

 independent of the theory of infinite aggregates. 



3 "*. Mr. T. W. Chaundy. — Commutative Operators. 



A sketch showing how the study of commutative pairs of ordinary difierential 

 operators is begun and pointing out the relation of the subject to a number of classical 

 problems in analysis and geometry. | 



SECTION B.— CHEMISTRY. 



(For references to the publication elsewhere of communications entered in the 

 following list of Transactions, see page 445.) 



Thursday, August 5. 



1. Presidential Address by Prof. J. F. Thokpe, F.R.S., on The Scope 



of Organic Chemistry. (See p. 46.) 



2. Prof. J. Backer. — Separation and Racemisation of Simple Optically 



Active Compounds. 



3. Prof. W. N. Haworth. — Modern Views on the Structure of the Disac- 



charides. 

 A marked advance made in the constitutional study of sugars is the generalisation 

 that the aldoses normally occur as amy lene- oxide forms ; that is, having a heterocyclic 

 six-membered ring and not as was formerly thought a five-membered ring (butylene- 

 oxide), and further that the y-aldoses are butyleiie-oxide sugars. (A revision of the 

 structural formula of glucose : Charlton, Haworth and Peat, J. Chem. Soc, 1926, 89 i 

 cf. Hirst, ibid., 352.) Difficulty was experienced in including tlie ketoses in this 

 classification owing to oxidation results obtained with fructose derivatives, which 

 pointed to the converse rule. Recent experiments (Hirst and Haworth) indicate^ 

 however, that the structure given to normal fructose by Irvine is invalid, as is also 

 that applied to y-fructose derivatives by Haworth. Both normal and y-fructose 

 are now included in the generalisation already applied to the aldoses. This 

 fundamental advance involves a large readjustment of our ideas as to the formulae 

 of disaccharides and polysaccharides. The possibility of the occurrence of y- or 

 butylene-oxide residues in the disaccharides was first suggested in the above paper 

 by Charlton, Haworth and Peat. The structural formulae applicvi to lactose,. 



