SCIENCE 



Friday, July 1, 1921 



The Significance of Eddium: Professor R. 

 A. MiLLIKAN 



Lincoln Ware Middle. 



Scientific Events: — 



The Printers' Strike and Science; Grant 

 for the Study of Stellar Parallaxes; Honor- 

 ary Degrees conferred by Tale University 

 Honorary Degrees at Harvard University. 



Soientifio Notes and News 



University and Educational News 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Use of the Terms "Erosion," "Denuda 

 tion, " " Corrosion ' ' and ' ' Corrosion ' ' : Dr, 

 Trederic H. Lahee. Tlw Breeding Habits 

 of Ambystoma tigrinum: Balph J. Gil 

 MORE. A Phenomenal Shoot: B. W. Wells, 

 The Aurora of May 14: Dr. A. E. Doug 

 LASS. The Aurora seen from Sinaloa, Mex 

 ico, in Latitude S7° N.: J. Gary Lindley 



The Mount Everest Expedition 14 



Special Articles: — 

 An Outline for Vascular Plants: Professor 

 Henry S. Conard 15 



The American Chemical Society: Dr. Charles 

 h. Parsons 16 



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

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

 Hudeon. N. Y. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RADIUM i 



We are met to-night to honor a discovery 

 and the discoverer, and we are doing it in a 

 way which I am sure delights her soul as 

 much as it does mine. The custom of man- 

 kind, when it would do honor to one who has 

 had the good fortune to be of service to his 

 fellows, is to make a hundred thousand dollar 

 parade, or to fire a hundred thousand dollar 

 salute, or, in rarer instances of sounder judg- 

 ment, to build a hundred thousand dollar 

 monument. Compare that sort of an expendi- 

 ture of the fruits of human toil with the glad 

 donation which you are making to-night of a 

 hundred thousand dollars, not merely for the 

 alleviation of suffering and the arrest of dis- 

 ease — that is important — but for something 

 which is vastly more important and more 

 fundamental than that, namely, for the pur- 

 pose of making it possible to peer farther into 

 the secrets of matter, for upon that vision and 

 the control of nature which that vision must 

 precede depends the weal or woe of our chil- 

 dren and our children's children for countless 

 generations. 



I wish to add a second element of unique- 

 ness to this occasion. Knowing Madame 

 Curie, as I have had the good fortune to do, 

 I am sure that she would not wish me to speak 

 a word of fulsome praise or to picture her 

 as a superman; she is that because she is a 

 woman, but not because she has had the ca- 

 pacity and the good fortune to make dis- 

 coveries of the first importance. It is a com- 

 mon and a pathetic spectacle to see military, 

 political, and social leaders who come con- 

 spicuously into the public gaze, lose their 

 sense of perspective and begin to regard them- 

 selves as holding a commission from the Al- 

 1 An address delivered at the National Museum, 

 Washington, D. C, on the evening of May 25, in 

 connection with the presentation of a gram of 

 radium to Madame Curie. 



