160 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1441 



Chemical Company, the Grasselli Chemical 

 Company, and from the National Aniline Com- 

 pany. All of these have been found to work 

 satisfactorily as a counterstain with the haema- 

 toxylin. They all seem to be more concen- 

 trated, however, than the Griibler product and 

 have a tendency to overstain, especially if used 

 in alcoholic solution. In aqueous solution, 

 although they give a slightly browner color 

 than Griibler's Orange G, they have proved 

 very satisfactory. Any tendency to overstain 

 can be counteracted by using weaker solutions. 

 The results are not yet complete but are very 

 encouraging so far as they go. 



PYEONIN 



Some difficulty has been experienced in ob- 

 taining a good American source of pyronin, 

 which is now considerably used in the Pappen- 

 heim stain and as a counterstain in the Gram 

 teehnie. Only two samples have so far been 

 tested under the direction of the committee, 

 one from Providence Chemical Company and 

 the other from the National Aniline Company. 

 The former proves satisfactory, the latter less 

 so. Other concerns list this stain, but their 

 products have not yet been tested. More work 

 on this stain is now in progress. 



S. I. KORNHAUSER 



F. W. Malloet 

 F. G. NovT 

 L. W. Sharp 

 H. J. Conn 



Chairman 

 Committee on Standardization of Stains, 

 National Besearch Council 

 Geneva, N. Y. 



GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED 



George Bruce Halsted, son of Oliver 

 Spencer and Adela (Meeker) Halsted, was 

 born at Newark, N. J., November 25, 1853. 

 He received the degrees of A.B. (1875) and 

 A.M. at Princeton, and Ph.D. (1879) at Johns 

 Hopkins. 



For a few years he was instructor in post- 

 graduate mathematics at Princeton, then 

 (1884-1903) professor of mathematics in the 

 University of Texas. Here he rendered with 

 marked success his most important services as 



a teacher of mathematics. After leaving this 

 institution he was professor of mathematics 

 at St. John's College, Md. (1903), and at 

 Kenyon College, Ohio (1903-6), and finally at 

 Colorado State Teachers' College (1906-12), 

 when he retired from teaching and devoted 

 himself to practical work in electrical engi- 

 neering. Six or seven years later his health 

 began to fail and in 1921 it broke down com- 

 pletely, so that he could not do any work. He 

 spent his last few months in hospitals and 

 sanitariums, and finally passed away, March 

 16, 1922, at the Roosevelt Hospital, New York. 

 After retiring from teaching. Dr. Halsted 

 continued his labors in the field of mathe- 

 matics so far as his occupation permitted, nor 

 did he abandon them, even after his failing 

 health had become serious, until further work 

 was physically impossible. 



At Johns Hopkins he studied under Sylves- 

 ter, for whom he had the greatest admiration 

 and from whom he seems to have imbibed the 

 view that, whatever else mathematics may be, 

 it is poetry. To this fact may possibly be due 

 his inclination to employ poetic diction in 

 discussing mathematical subjects. 



Dr. Halsted was preeminently a geometri- 

 cian, though he wrote some articles on higher 

 mathematics. He was an ardent devotee of 

 non-Euclidean geometry. Some of his utter- 

 ances justify the opinion that he believed, not 

 only that space is a genus comprising more 

 than one species, but that our space is actu- 

 ally non-Euclidean and (with Riemann) that, 

 though boundless, space may be finite. He 

 wrote several works on geometry (including 

 mensuration) one of which was translated and 

 republished in France. He wrote many articles 

 for periodicals, most of them on non-Euclidean 

 geometry. He also contributed articles to the 

 Century Dictionary and the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica. He translated a good many works, 

 written in different modern languages and two 

 written in Latin — Bolyai (the well-known Ap- 

 pendix) and Saecheri (Euclides Vindicatus). 

 He seemed to attach more importance to his 

 having translated these two works and 

 Lobatschewsky's non-Euclidean geometry than 

 to anything else he ever did. When he was 

 compelled to cease from work of any kind he 



