April 23, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



601 



time until 1912, when impaired health com- 

 pelled him to retire from active work, although 

 he was retained on the faculty as advisory dean. 

 Last year he was granted a retiring allowance 

 by the Carnegie Foundation. 



It may be truthfully said that Dean Marvin 

 devoted his life to the cause of engineering 

 education. He worked and wrote for its ad- 

 vancement. In 1901 he was elected president 

 of the Society for the Promotion of Engineer- 

 ing Education. He was one of the charter 

 members, and the first president of the Kansas 

 chapter of the Society of the Sigma Xi, one 

 of the earliest chapters of this organization 

 established. He was honored with the presi- 

 dency of the national organization, and did 

 much to shape the policy and raise the stand- 

 ard of this society. 



As an active member of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science (vice- 

 president in 1896); of the American Society 

 of Civil Engineers; of the Society on Testing 

 Materials; Kansas Academy of Science; and 

 as advisory member of the Kansas State 

 Board of Health, he took an active part in 

 the work for the encouragement of research 

 and the advancement of scientific knowledge. 



His colleagues in the university and the 

 thousands of students who have been under 

 his instruction, feel that a friend has gone. 

 In the words of one of Dean Marvin's former 

 students : 



He was further qualified for his work by hia cul- 

 ture and refinement. No man was better fitted 

 than Frank Marvin to plant in his boys the desire 

 for the fine things of life. He was a reader, a 

 student, an artist. Through all the busy years 

 of striving and building, of creating great proper- 

 ties, or of humble service in some of the quieter 

 places in life, Frank Marvin's boys look back to 

 the school days of long ago and recall the quiet 

 cultured gentleman who gave them so many ideals 

 and who in his own life so lived these ideals. 



The University of Kansas has honored the 

 name of the first dean of its engineering school 

 by naming the new engineering building 

 "Marvin Hall," and the former students and 

 friends are about to place in the building a 

 bronze bust to commemorate his name. 



liAWKENCE, ' Kans. E. H. S. Bailet 



THE CHEMICAL INDUSTMY IN GREAT 



BRITAIN 

 The position and prospects of the British 

 dye industry were discussed by Dr. W. H. 

 Perkin, Waynflete professor of chemistry, Ox- 

 ford, in his presidential address delivered on. 

 March 25 at the annual general meeting of the 

 Chemical Society, London. Dr. Perkin is the 

 son of the late Sir William Perkin, F.E.S., 

 the discoverer of aniline dyes. " The Position 

 of the Organic Chemical Industry " was the 

 title of the lecture, and Dr. Perkin according 

 to an abstract in the London Times at the 

 outset expressed his conviction that the causes 

 of the decadence of the industry in this country 

 were still imperfectly understood. One of the 

 main reasons for our present position was that 

 we, as a nation, and our manufacturers in par- 

 ticular, had failed to understand the extreme 

 complexity of the scientific basis of organic 

 chemical industry. The decadence of the coal- 

 tar industry and its gradual transference to 

 Germany began during the period from 1870 

 to 18Y5. It was in 1874 that the works of 

 Perkin and Sons at Greenford Green were 

 sold to the firm of Brooke, Simpson and Spiller, 

 and these works were then much in advance of 

 anything that existed in Germany. One rea- 

 son for the sale, Dr. Perkin said, was his 

 father's natural dislike to an industrial career, 

 and his desire to devote himself entirely to 

 pure chemistry. 



There was, however, a much more weighty 

 consideration. It was recognized that the 

 works could not be carried on successfully in 

 competition with the rising industry in Ger- 

 many unless a number of first-rate chemists 

 could be obtained and employed in developing 

 the existing processes, and more particularly 

 in the all-important work of making new dis- 

 coveries. Inquiries were made at many of the 

 British universities in the hope of discovering 

 young men trained in the methods of organic 

 chemistry, but in vain. 



The value of the coloring matter consumed 

 in the United Kingdom was £2,000,000 per 

 annum, and these dyes were essential to textile 

 industries representing at least £200,000,000 a 

 year and employing IJ millions of workers, and 



