334 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1422 



provides the added meaus required for the 

 joint investigation in conjunction with the 

 Mount Wilson Observatory, a department of 

 the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



It is hardly necessary to say that this liberal 

 action is most heartily appreciated by the 

 Trustees of the California Institute, who are 

 thus encouraged to continue and to extend 

 their policy of developing fundamental research 

 in science and engineering. 



George E. Hale 



RESEARCH IN THE NORMAN BRIDGE 

 LABORATORY 



It is a great honor to me to have been re- 

 quested to address you on this memorable occa- 

 sion and I have many good reasons for being 

 interested in to-day's proceedings. In the first 

 place, I have been so kindly and warmly wel- 

 comed by the scientific men of the institute that 

 I feel almost as if I belonged to them and as 

 if I also were going to have a share in the 

 facilities for scientific research that have now 

 been put at their disposal. 



In the second place, I have for a long time 

 admired Professor Millikan's important work, 

 and I have now some idea of his great energy 

 and activity, wondering how he can do all he 

 does. I therefore heartily rejoice at this splen- 

 did opportunity being offered him to work on 

 his favorite subject. He is going to have a 

 laboratory that is worthy of him as was his 

 wish, with Professor Noyes and his chemists 

 and with the Mount Wilson Observatory close 

 at hand. 



But apart from these personal feelings the 

 great development that has been inaugurated 

 here to-day has my warmest sympathy. This 

 would have been the case even if I never had 

 come to this country. I am happy to say so. 

 Indeed, even when separated by oceans, 

 physicists form a kind of fraternity spread all 

 over the world. It is true that the ties that 

 unite them have not at all times been equally 

 strong and that they have to a certain extent 

 been severed in the disastrous period through 

 which the world has passed. But, though we 

 recognize that this could hardly be otherwise, 

 we sincerely hope that in the end the feeling 



of good comradeship, such as is natural among 

 men who have before them a great and import- 

 ant common task, will again prevail. It can 

 not be too much emphasized that the under- 

 standing of Natui'e's secrets, that the use of 

 knowledge of forces of greater urgencj', and 

 that much remains to be done, will join all 

 workers. Certainly each individual worker will 

 do his best to follow his own inclinations and 

 to act according to his special abilities, and it 

 is higlily desirable that the research work of 

 each nation bear the mark of its mentality and 

 national aptitudes but by mutual aid and co- 

 operation, one stimulating the other, all can 

 be blended in one great effort. 



I am deeply convinced that it must be so and 

 therefore I feel that Dr. jSTorman Bridge, who 

 is so generously promoting scientific research 

 in this eountr}', deserves the warm thanks, not 

 only of Americans, but of scientific men. 



And now when he takes off his evening dress, 

 and has returned to his every-day life. Professor 

 Millikan will set to work in his laboratory. 

 You know what he can do, what marvels he can 

 achieve with a single oil drop, determining, 

 more certainly that ever was done, the electric 

 charge and the manner and the number of the 

 smallest particles of which matter consists. 

 This afternoon we heard from him how he has 

 been able to extend his investigations to ultra- 

 violet invisible rays of the very smallest wave 

 lengths. He is planning to send up high in the 

 atmosphere instruments which, when safely re- 

 turned to the earth, wiU tell about radiations 

 which exist at great altitudes and of which he 

 wants to trace the origin, either of the earth or 

 the heavens. And when the high tension labora- 

 tory is ready, he and his fellow workers will 

 bombard matter with electrons moving with a 

 velocity comparable with that of light and they 

 will try to knock to pieces the atoms of our 

 elements and to see what becomes of them. 



In all this they will work with Professor 

 Noyes of the Gates Chemical Laboratory and 

 with the astronomers of Mount Wilson, If 

 some effect can not be found on the earth they 

 will look for it in the sun and if there is some 

 new and not wholly understood phenomenon 

 in solar physics, it will be reproduced and in- 



