JUNE 21, 1912] 
Mr. President: In behalf of the academic coun- 
cil I have the honor to present for the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Laws Dr. William Crawford 
Gorgas, colonel in the Medical Corps of the United 
States Army, member of the Isthmian Canal Com- 
mission and chief sanitary officer of the Isthmian 
Canal Zone, formerly president of the American 
Medical Association, physician and sanitarian of 
the highest eminence, who by his conquests over 
pestilential diseases has rendered signal service to 
his profession, to his country and to the world. 
With high administrative capacity and with full 
command of the resources of sanitary science 
Colonel Gorgas has given to the world the most 
complete and impressive demonstration in medical 
history of the accuracy and the life-saving power 
of our knowledge concerning the causation and 
mode of spread of certain dreaded epidemic and 
endemic diseases. He it was who, by application 
of the discoveries of Major Reed and his col- 
leagues of the Army Yellow Fever Commission, 
was mainly instrumental in freeing Cuba of yellow 
fever, and he it is who, in spite of obstacles and 
embarrassments, has made the construction of the 
Isthmian Canal possible without serious loss of 
life or incapacity from disease—a triumph of pre- 
ventive medicine not surpassed in importance and 
significance by the achievements of the engineer. 
In the conquests of science over disease, in the 
saving of untold thousands of human lives and 
human treasure, in the protection of our shores 
from the once ever-threatening scourge of yellow 
fever, in the reclamation to civilization of tropical 
lands—in results such as these are to be found the 
monuments of our laureate, his victories of peace, 
to which this university now pays tribute by such 
honor as it can bestow. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 
Tur honorary degree of doctor of laws has 
been conferred by the University of Illinois 
on Vice-president Thomas J. Burrill and 
Comptroller Samuel W. Shattuck, both of 
whom retire at the end of the academic year 
after an active service of over forty years. 
Oxrorp University has conferred its doc- 
torate of science on Mr. A. P. Maudslay, 
president of the Royal Anthropological Insti- 
tute of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Dr. E. RutuerForD, F.R.S., Langworthy 
professor of physics at Manchester, has been 
SCIENCE 
957 
elected a corresponding member of the Im- 
perial Academy of Sciences, Vienna. 
Dr. L. A. Bauer has been invited to de- 
liver the Halley lecture on “ Terrestrial Mag- 
netism” at the University of Oxford, Eng- 
land, in May, 1918. He was elected a fellow 
of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 
ences at the annual meeting in May. 
At the sixth annual meeting of the British 
Science Guild, held on May 17, a silver plate 
was presented to Sir Norman Lockyer, in- 
scribed as follows: “ Presented to Sir Norman 
Lockyer, K.C.B., LL.D., D.Sc. F.R.S., by 
members of the British Science Guild, on his 
seventy-sixth birthday, May 17, 1912, as a 
token of their esteem and as a recognition of 
his patriotic labors to promote the application 
of scientific principles to industrial and gen- 
eral purposes.” Sir Norman was unfortu- 
nately prevented by ill-health from being 
present. 
We learn from Nature that Dr. D. H. 
Scott, F.R.S., president of the Linnean So- 
ciety, has been elected a foreign member of 
the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and 
Letters, and of the Royal Society of Sciences, 
Upsala. 
It is reported that Professor Lanfranchi, 
of the University of Parma, who has been 
engaged for several years in the study of 
sleeping sickness, has been infected by the dis- 
ease in a severe form, and has been taken to 
the Pasteur Institute in Paris for treatment. 
Proressor Mayvint—E W. TwircHet, head 
of the department of geology in the Univer- 
sity of South Carolina, has resigned to ac- 
cept the position of assistant state geologist 
of New Jersey. He will reside in Trenton 
where he will take up his new duties early in 
July. 
At the meeting of the New York Section 
of the American Chemical Society, held on 
June 7, Professor Herbert R. Moody, of the 
College of the City of New York, was elected 
chairman of the section for the coming ses- 
sion to take the place of chairman-elect A. B. 
Lamb, who is going to Cambridge. The New 
York Section increased its membership over 
