November 26, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



509 



Brown, the Bureau's representative at that 

 port, for appropriate publication. The serv- 

 ice is being established near the close of the 

 season, but it is desired to have it in working 

 order, so that it may be efficient on the resump- 

 tion of more active fishing in the spring, when 

 it is hoped to extend it to the coast of Maine. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



A GIFT of $700,000 to the University of Col- 

 orado for the construction of a medical school 

 and hospital by the General Education Board 

 of the Rockefeller Foundation is announced. 



Two bequests to Tale University are an- 

 nounced, one of $46,360 from the late Allen 

 P. Lovejoy, of the class of 1904, of Janesville, 

 Wisconsin, for general university purposes, 

 and one of about $113,000 from the estate of 

 Levi I. Shoemaker, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 



The president of Argentina has approved 

 the law ordering the immediate construction 

 of a surgical institute for the chair at Buenos 

 Ayres in charge of Professor Jose Arce. Four 

 hundred thousand dollars have been provided 

 for this work. 



The following changes have been made in 

 the pathological chemistry staff of the 'New 

 York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hos- 

 pital : George Eric Simpson, Ph.D., has re- 

 signed as instructor to become assistant pro- 

 fessor of biochemistry at McGill University. 

 James J. Short, M.D., has resigned as in- 

 structor to complete his interneship in the hos- 

 pital. To fill this latter position, Hilda M. 

 Croll, A.M., formerly associate professor of 

 physiological chemistry at the Woman's Med- 

 ical College of Pennsylvania, has been made 

 associate. Cameron V. Bailey, M.D., has been 

 appointed assistant professor, to devote his 

 time largely to respiratory and metabolic 

 work. 



The department of physics, West Virginia 

 University, reports the following additions to 

 the staff: Fred A. Molby, Ph.D. (Cornell); 

 formerly of the University of Cincinnati, asso- 



ciate professor. E. F. George, Ph.D. (0. S. 

 U.), foi-merly of the Research Laboratory of 

 B. F. Goodrich Rubber Company, assistant 

 professor. O. R. Ford, B.S. (Salem), in- 

 structor. 



Miss Louise Otis, a graduate of Northwest- 

 em University, formerly chief chemist of The 

 Arco Company, Cleveland, 0., and recently 

 chemist with Glenn H. Pickard, of Chicago, 

 has been appointed instructor in food chem- 

 istry at Korthwestem University. 



Professor H. H. Conwell, associate pro- 

 fessor of mathematics in the University of 

 Idaho, has resigned to accept a similar 

 position in Beloit College. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



A POSSIBLE RELATION BETWEEN MECHAN- 

 ICAL, CHEMICAL AND ELECTRICAL 

 QUANTITIES 



To THE Editor of Science: It is always of 

 interest to find an unexpected numerical rela- 

 tion between different physical constants, and 

 when the only numerical factor turns out to 

 be a multiple of 10, one is led to expect that 

 in the absolute system it is a rational, unity 

 relation, if the units are properly chosen. 

 I At present the numerical connecting link 

 between chemical and electrical quantities is 

 the electrochemical equivalent of silver, an em- 

 pirically determined constant whose accepted 

 value now is 0.00111800 gram per coulomb. 

 If this value were only about 3/10 of 1 per 

 cent, higher the writer has found the follow- 

 ing curious and totally unexpected relation 

 would be true for all the elements: 

 grams X ff = 10 X coulombs X atomic weigM /g. 



in which g is the acceleration of gravity nu- 

 merically equal to 980.597; it will be noticed 

 that the only coefficient is 10. The faraday 

 (the number of coulombs per gram ion) then 

 would be equal to 3^/10 = 96,157, now gener- 

 ally taken as 96,500. The first term (grams 

 X ff) represents a force in dynes, if the grams 

 represent a mass. The physical meaning of 

 the right hand term is not clear, but to bal- 

 ance the physical dimensions the factor 



