JANTJABT 23, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



139 



studied for one winter in the American School 

 for Classical Studies in Kome, and for one 

 Bununer in the University of Cambridge, Eng- 

 land. 



Professor Walter Mulford, of Cornell 

 University, has been appointed head of the 

 new department of forestry in the University 

 of California. His duties will begin with Au- 

 gust 1 next. Since there are 29,000,000 acres 

 of national forest in California, besides vast 

 areas of forest privately owned, the subject is 

 one of great importance there. Dr. Patrick 

 Beveridge Kennedy has been appointed assist- 

 ant professor of agronomy. Dr. Calvin O. 

 Esterly has been appointed as a biologist in 

 the Scripps Institution for Biological Eesearch 

 at La Jolla. 



Mr. J. J. Galloway, Ph.D. (Indiana), has 

 been appointed instructor in geology at Indi- 

 ana University. 



Mr. Halbert P. Bybee, M.A. (Indiana), has 

 been appointed instructor in geology at the 

 University of Texas. 



Mr. J. C. Johnson has been appointed to the 

 chair of general biology, botany and zoology, 

 at Auckland University College, in succession 

 to Professor A. P. W. Thomas. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 

 COLUMBIUM VERSUS NIOBIUM 



At a meeting of the Council of the Inter- 

 national Association of Chemical Societies in 

 Brussels, last September, a committee on in- 

 organic nomenclature, among other recom- 

 mendations, endorsed the name and symbol 

 " niobium " and " Nb," for the element which 

 was originally named columbium. As this 

 recommendation is historically erroneous, a 

 brief statement of the facts appears to be 

 desirable. 



In 1801, Hatchett, an English chemist, 

 analyzed a strange American mineral, and in 

 it found a new metallic acid; the oxide of an 

 element which he named columbium. A year 

 later, Ekeberg, in Sweden, analyzed a similar 

 mineral from Finland, and discovered another 

 element, which he called tantalum. WoUas- 



ton, in 1809, undertook a new investigation 

 of these elements, and concluded that they 

 were identical; a conclusion which, if it were 

 true, would have involved the rejection of the 

 later name, and the retention of the earlier 

 columbium. The accepted rules of scientific 

 nomenclature make this point clear. 



For more than forty years after Hatchett's 

 discovery, both names were in current use; 

 for although Wollaston's views were accepted 

 by many chemists, there were others uncon- 

 vinced. In 1844, however, Heinrich Rose after 

 an elaborate study of columbite and tantalite 

 from many localities, announced the dis- 

 covery of two new elements in them, niobium 

 and pelopium. The latter supposed element 

 was afterwards found to be non-existent, but 

 the niobium was merely the old columbium 

 under a new name. That name in some mys- 

 terious manner was substituted by the German 

 chemists for the original, appropriate name, 

 and has been in general use in Europe ever 

 since. In America, the name columbium has 

 been generally preferred, and was formally 

 endorsed by the Chemical Section of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science more than twenty years ago. In Eng- 

 land, also, columbium is much used, as, for 

 example, in Roscoe and Schorlemmer's " Trea- 

 tise on Chemistry," Thorpe's " Dictionary of 

 Applied Chemistry," and the new edition of 

 the Encyclopedia Britannica. 



The foundation of Rose's error seems to 

 have been an uncritical acceptance of Wollas- 

 ton's views; for he speaks of all the minerals 

 he studied as tantalite. He also, at least in 

 his original memoir, claims that the atomic 

 weight of niobium is greater than that of 

 tantalum, and here he was obviously vsrrong. 



In short, the name columbium has more 

 than forty years priority, and during that in- 

 terval was accepted by many chemists, and 

 was more or less in current use. To employ 

 the name niobium is not only unhistorical, 

 but it is also unfair to the original discoverer, 

 meaningless, and without any justification 

 whatever. Furthermore, it injures the splen- 

 did reputation of Rose, for it perpetuates and 

 emphasizes one of his few errors. The recom- 



