July 1, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



9 



LINCOLN WARE RIDDLE 



The following' minute on the life and ser- 

 vices of Professor Eiddle was placed upon the 

 records of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 

 of Harvard University at the meeting of June 

 7, 1921: 



Lincoln Ware Riddle was born in Jamaica Plain 

 Mass., October 17, 1880. He graduated from Har^ 

 vard in 1902, received the degree of A.M. in 1905 

 and of Ph.D. in 1906. In the same year he be 

 came instructor in botany at Wellesley College, 

 He was appointed professor of botany there in 

 1917 and held this position for two years, when he 

 came to Harvard as assistant professor of erypto- 

 gamio botany and associate curator of the crypto- 

 gamic herbarium. At the close of his first year 

 of service upon our faculty he was attacked by 

 the prolonged illness which terminated fatally on 

 the 16th of last January. 



The rare enthusiasm and singular devotion which 

 he brought to his work were early made manifest. 

 As a boy of twelve, at the Roxbury Latin School, 

 he declared his purpose to devote his life to botany, 

 and henceforth gave himself unreservedly to its 

 pursuit. 



At Wellesley he became deeply interested in 

 lichens, and devoted himself more and more to the 

 study of these plants. He made good use of the 

 important lichen herbarium at Wellesley, and of 

 the unique collection at Harvard, and in 1913, 

 during a year's leave of absence in Europe, stud- 

 ied the collections in Upsala, Helsingfors, Geneva, 

 London and Paris. His publications soon made 

 him a leading authority on the subject. 



He was constantly handicapped by a frail 

 physique, but this did not prevent him from ac- 

 complishing important scientific work or from 

 taking an active part in the affairs of the com- 

 munity. In his relations with his fellows he was 

 the soul of honor and loyalty, with a personality 

 that drew all men to him. In the class-room his 

 sympathy and friendliness, as well as his clarity 

 of style, made his teaching attractive. His de- 

 votion to his students was noteworthy and his 

 influence great and lasting. 



In the circle which mourns him his careful schol- 

 arship was widely esteemed by his professional as- 

 sociates; he was honored by all for his inspiring 

 ideals, and, beyond the lot of most men, he was 

 sincerely beloved. 



winthrop j. v. osterhout, 

 Roland Thaxter, 

 Merritt L. Fernald, 



Committee 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



THE PRINTERS' STRIKE AND SCIENCE 



It is perhaps desirable to state that, owing 

 to the strike of compositors for a forty-four 

 hour week, the printers of Science continue 

 to bring out the journal under serious diffi- 

 culties. They have, for example, been unable 

 to page the number of The American Natural- 

 ist, which should have appeared on May 1 and 

 was in type at that time. Owing to the 

 weekly publication of Science, it has been 

 given precedence, the composition and make- 

 up of the number having been largely done 

 by the heads of departments. It has, how- 

 ever, been necessary to reduce the size of the 

 numbers and to limit the amount of composi- 

 tion as closely as possible. Nearly all adver- 

 tisers have cooperated with the publication 

 department in using copy already in type and 

 limiting as far as possible new composition. 

 It may again be noted that the strike is 

 nation-wide, affecting, in the east at least, the 

 printing of most scientific journals. 



GRANT FOR THE STUDY OF STELLAR 

 PARALLAXES' 



The Advisory Council for Scientific and 

 Industrial Research has quite recently granted 

 an application made to it to assist in carry- 

 ing out a piece of research work relating to 

 the determination of the parallaxes of stars 

 having a certain type of spectrum. The grant 

 has been made to Mr. W. B. Eimmer, who up 

 to the present has been employed in spectro- 

 scopic researches at the Imperial College of 

 Science and Technology under the direction 

 of Professor A. Fowler, but will now carry 

 out this research at the Norman Bockyer 

 Observatory at Salcombe Hill, Sidmouth. 

 This observatory was founded by the late Sir 

 Norman Lockyer in 1912, and the programme 

 of work has been confined strictly to the pho- 

 tography of the spectra of stars and their sub- 

 sequent classification according to his scheme 

 of increasing and decreasing temperatures, 

 which has been confirmed in its general fea- 

 tures by the more recent work of Russell and 

 Hertzsprung on giant and dwarf stars. The 

 researches of Professor W. S. Adams have now 



1 From Nature. 



