SCIENCE 



Friday, June 10, 1921 



The Inaugural Address of the President of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 

 Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols 523 



Science and Community Trusts: Dr. Eobeet 

 M. Yerkes 527 



Scientific Events: — 

 The Medical School of Columbia Vnvoersity 

 and the Presbyterian Bospital; Gifts hy 

 the Carnegie Corporation to Carnegie In- 

 stitutes at Pittsburgh; Meetings of Brit- 

 ish and American Chemists; Organization 

 of Members of the American Association at 

 the Pennsylvania State College 529 



Scientific Notes and Neivs 531 



University and Educational News 534 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Concerning Mecent Auroras: De. Elihu 

 Thomson. Tlie Landslide near Mont Blame: 

 W. M. D. Extra-mundane Life: Professor 

 Ellen Hates 534 



Scientific Books: — 



The Health of the Industrial WorTcer: Pro- 

 fessor Eetnold a. Spaeth 536 



Special Articles: — 



Soil Acidity the Besultant of Chemical Phe- 

 nomena: Dr. H. a. Notes 539 



The American Mathematical Society: Profes- 

 sor E. G. D. Eichardson 540 



MSS. intended for 'publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 

 Hudson, N. Y. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS i 



The institute, like every other educational 

 enterprise, has its individual problems and 

 needs, but these I do not yet sufficiently un- 

 derstand to make a public discussion of them 

 profitable to anybody. What I shall say, 

 therefore, bears on technical education in gen- 

 eral without reference to the separate needs 

 of this or any other school. 



Many of you who have lately become fa- 

 miliar with Mr. H. Q. Wells's interpretation of 

 history will realize new significance in the 

 fact that children are born into a world that 

 is already old. For many thousand years be- 

 fore our generation men were experimenting 

 with Ifature, with social, economic, political, 

 and religious ideas and practices. Our civi- 

 lization to-day is the forward-borne product 

 of this slowly and painfully acquired ex- 

 perience of the race. 



The whole educational process, broadly seen, 

 is the problem of putting our young people 

 in touch with the more outstanding results of 

 this age-old accumulation and of giving them 

 exercise in the most direct thought processes 

 by which this experience and knowledge have 

 been acquired; processes by which experience 

 and knowledge may be enlarged and extended. 



The education of boy or girl, therefore, con- 

 sists in bringing them up to the present day, 

 so that they can enter independent life as use- 

 ful thinkers and doers in the world as it is. 

 Dreams of what the world ought to be are not 

 only stimulating but indispensable to human 

 progress, but each generation must begin 

 building on the world as it finds it. 



Expressed otherwise, our educational effort 



1 Given hy Dr. Ernest Pox Nichols on the oc- 

 casion of Ms installation as president of the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology. 



