Decembeb 9, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



575 



of Michigan, has reached Manila after six 

 weeks spent in examining the Bonin, Mari- 

 anne and Caroline Islands in the western Pa- 

 cific Ocean. Until he reached Tap on Sep- 

 tember 11, he was traveling as the guest of 

 the Japanese ISTavy Department. At Yap the 

 TJ. S. gunboat Bittern was placed at his dis- 

 posal and the Pelews and scattered islands to 

 the southwest were visited. He sailed on the 

 Bittern on October 3 for a 4000-mile cruise 

 along the great Sumatra mountain arc and 

 through the Nicobar and Andaman islands to 

 Rangoon, Burmah. He will then proceed to 

 Europe to lecture at the Univesities of Delft 

 and Utrecht, during the spring semester. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



The Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation states that the University of Colorado 

 is waging an active campaign to raise the re- 

 maining $200,000 necessary to insure the erec- 

 tion of the new medical school and state hospi- 

 tal. Toward the $1,500,000 which the project 

 will cost, the General Education Board has 

 pledged $700,000 and the state has appropriated 

 $600,000, both sums contingent upon the rais- 

 ing of the $200,000 balance by the university. 

 An effort will be made to obtain one dollar 

 from each of 200,000 citizens of Colorado. 



Dr. Elihu Thomson, chief consulting engi- 

 neer of the General Electric Company, has 

 again been appointed acting president of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a post 

 which he filled after the death of Dr. Richard 

 C. Maclaurin in January, 1920, and will con- 

 tinue until a successor to President Nichols is 

 named. The educational affairs of the insti- 

 tute will continue to be directed by a faculty 

 administrative committee consisting of Profes- 

 sor Henry P. Talbot, head of the department 

 of chemistry and acting dean; Professor Ed- 

 ward F. Miller, head of the department of 

 mechanical engineering and chairman of the 

 faculty, and Professor Edwin B. Wilson, head 

 of the department of physics. 



Eliot Blackwelder, A.B., Ph.D. (Chicago), 



will become professor of geology at Stanford 

 University next year, succeeding Dr. Bailey 

 Willis, who will retire in accordance with the 

 provision by which professors of Stanford be- 

 come emeritus at the age of sixty-five. Pro- 

 fessor Blackwelder is now lecturing at Har- 

 vard, filling the place of Professor Daly, who is 

 absent on leave in South Africa. 



E. H. WellSj who has conducted special 

 geological investigations for the Chino Copper 

 Company, has been elected president of the 

 New Mexico State School of Mines at Socorro. 



Dr. E. Eugene Barker, formerly assistant 

 professor of plant breeding in Cornell Univer- 

 sity and more recently of the Insular Govern- 

 ment Service, Las Piedras, Porto Rico, has 

 become associate professor of botany, with par- 

 ticular reference to genetics, in the University 

 of Georgia. 



C. W. WatsoNj a graduate of the Tale Forest 

 School in 1920, has been called to the School of 

 Forestry, University of Idaho, as instructor in 

 forestry. Mr. Watson spent the past year in 

 study abroad under a traveling fellowship in 

 forestry granted by the American-Scandi- 

 navian Foundation. 



Mr. Stanley Wyatt, investigator to the In- 

 dustrial Fatigue Research Board in England, 

 has been appointed lecturer in psychology at 

 the University of Manchester. 



Col. Sir Gerald Lenox-Conyngham, F.R.S., 

 has been appointed fellow and prelector in 

 geodesy at Trinity College, Cambridge. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF HELMHOLTZ'S 

 " OPTIK " 



To the Editor of Science : Many readers of 

 Science will be glad to know that the council 

 of the Optical Society has appointed a commit- 

 tee to make arrangements for bringing out an 

 English translation of Helmholtz's great work 

 on physiological optics. 



The first edition of the " Handbuch der 

 physiologischen Optik" was published in 1866, 

 more than half a century ago; and the fact 

 that this epoch-making work, which remains 

 to-day the most original treatise on physiolog- 



