February 14, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



155 



data for investigations new or old, and in- 

 spired bj' his experience with new enthusi- 

 asm alike for the magnificent researches of 

 the great observatory, and for his own 

 humbler work? 



Such a career deserved unusual recogui- 

 tion, and received it in a merited degree. 

 Almost all the honors of the scientific world 

 fell to his lot, and the list of these distinc- 

 tions is too long to detail here. But those 

 who knew him will mourn less the disap- 

 pearance of the distinguished leader of sci- 

 ence than the loss of a warm and loyal 

 friend, one of the kindliest and most gen- 

 erous of men. 



Henry Norris Russell 

 Princeton University Observatory, 

 February 6, 1919 



SOME RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO 

 THE PHYSICS OF THE AIR' 

 There has come to us from ancient times 

 the story of a foolish man who sold his birth- 

 right for a mess of pottage, and that story 

 to-day is right applicable to us physicists, 

 except in one important particular — we haven't 

 even got the pottage. No department of 

 learning has a richer birthright tlian has the 

 department of physics in meteorology — the 

 physics of the air. And yet the few institu- 

 tions that even profess to teach this subject 

 in any form offer it through the department 

 of geology, or, more frequently still, that 

 omnivorous department which, for want of a 

 better name, is called the department of geog- 

 raphy. Statistical meteorology, if such ex- 

 pression will be permitted, or climatology, is 

 of course of great interest alike to the geol- 

 ogist and the geographer and this they should 

 teach and in great measure do teach, but 

 climatology is no more meteorology than de- 



1 Address of the vice-president and chairman of 

 Section B — Physics, American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Baltimore, December. 

 1918. 



scriptive geography, for instance, is geology. 

 Its value is great and unquestioned, but its 

 function, like the function of geography, is 

 merely to describe and not to explain. 



Meteorology, on the other hand, is con- 

 cerned with causes, it is the physics of the 

 air, a vast subject of rapidly growing im- 

 portance upon which peace and war alike are 

 becoming more and more dependent. Only 

 yesterday we 



Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there 

 rained a ghastly dew 



From the nations ' airy navies grappling in the cen- 

 tral blue; 



and to-day 



Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of 

 magic sails. 



Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with 

 costly bales. 



It is, therefore, no longer an opportunity, a 

 shamefully neglected opportunity, that invites, 

 but an im|)erative duty that commands our 

 leading institutions to add to the various sub- 

 jects taught, studied and investigated in their 

 departments of physics that eminently val- 

 uable and fascinatingly difficult branch of 

 geophysics — the physics of the air. 



No doubt the great majority of colleges and 

 universities would find it highly impracticable 

 to add a proper course in meteorology to their 

 present long list of electives. Neither is it 

 practicable nor desirable for all of tliem to 

 teach anthropology, say, despite its fascina- 

 tion, nor even any whatever of the a-to-z kinds 

 of engineering. But it is insisted with all 

 possible emphasis that if taught at all it be 

 taught right — taught as a branch of physics. 

 It is also insisted that there is a growing 

 need, especially in connection with both the 

 science and the art of aviation, for young men 

 who understand the phenomena of the at- 

 mosphere. Nor should it be forgotten that 

 when our army called for men trained in 

 meteorological physics it called in vain — they 

 did not exist. Furthermore, it would be a 

 godsend to our national Weather Bureau if in 

 the future it could secure a larger portion of 

 its personnel from among miiversity gradu- 



