500 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1005 



accomplished after a Kitchener-like advance, in 

 which each step at a time was buttressed and 

 battlemented by coordinated facts until the sum- 

 mit was attained and the fortress was won. It 

 was an irresistible march of the horse, foot and ar- 

 tillery of scientific endeavor. The attack upon 

 rubber, on the other hand, recalls nothing so 

 much as the raid of the adventurers accompanying 

 Ckirtes into the wilds of Mexico. Ludicrously few 

 in number and ill equipped save with a dauntless 

 spirit, they plunged desperately into a wilderness 

 absolutely unknown and denizened by countless 

 thousands of a malignant and disciplined enemy; 

 yet they conquered Mexico. The conquest of Mex- 

 ico was incredible, it was unreasonable to the mili- 

 tary tactician; so is the conquest of rubber in- 

 credible to the tactician of scientific research. 



Allow me to quote anotter sentence which 

 I think shows one of the great elements of his 

 leadership. 



Of course I have forgotten something. I have 

 forgotten the afternoon tire in the garish light of 

 the laboratories, the hard cot at night by the lab- 

 oratory table, the broken experiments, and the 

 heart-breaking disappointments to endeavor. But 

 so did Marco Polo, for you will look in vain 

 through all his glowing pages for the bitter cold 

 of the morning camp, or the intolerable heat of the 

 desert or of the pain of insect pests, or of his 

 sorrow at the loss of his goods — all forgotten in 

 the retrospect of his wonderful journey. 



Valery-Eadot wrote two delightful volumes 

 giving us a picture of Louis Pasteur, yet there 

 are two incidents which to me are most illu- 

 minating and recall Doctor Duncan. The 

 author tells us of Pasteur's anguish on the 

 occasion of the death of a boy from rabies. 

 Pasteur forthwith undertook an investigation 

 of the subject. Finally one sees this great, 

 tender-hearted man with all the wonderful 

 vision of his mature years brought near 

 death's door and in one last spasm of effort 

 crying: "We must work. "We must work." 

 And so Eobert Kennedy Duncan was removed 

 by the accident of death just as his dreams, his 

 great constructive dreams, for the ameliora- 

 tion of man seemed to be in the dawn of their 

 fulfillment. Only last December Doctor Dun- 

 can attended the Atlanta meeting of the 

 American Association for the Advancement 



of Science and met Dr. Howard A. Kelly. 

 Sixty thousand people dying of cancer in this 

 country every year! He returned from that 

 meeting burning with a desire to do some- 

 thing. The idea that radium is and un- 

 doubtedly always will be beyond the reach of 

 thousands of these sufferers, that was what 

 appealed to him. Couldn't something be done 

 about it? He believed there could. He told 

 his ideas to a Pittsburgh business man, who 

 very quickly said, " It would give me real 

 pleasure to help you tackle this thing." 



Another sentence of Doctor Duncan's will 

 always stick in my mind and I think gives us 

 a clue to his fine spiritual nature. In discuss- 

 ing the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen 

 and hydrogen he recalls that up to 1908 the 

 best work of Haber, Nernst and others had 

 failed to give results of industrial promise 

 and as Dr. Duncan said of Nernst's work: 



With this final investigation, then, it was 

 "thumbs down" for the subject; it was finished, 

 exhausted, dead. 



But Professor Haber had a feeling that the 

 thing could be done. Doctor Duncan says : 



It is to be understood that this "feeling" 

 which possessed Haber was not the obsession of an 

 ignorant dreamer but was actually the expression 

 of a faith that lay deeper than reason on the part 

 of one who knew, possibly better than any one else 

 from the standpoint of reason, its folly. 



The splendid qualities which he so admired 

 in others he himself possessed. It has ever 

 been such rare spirits which have done the 

 impossible, have pointed the way. 



THE WELLESLET COLLEGE FIRE 

 The fire at Wellesley College on March 17, 

 which totally destroyed College Hall, the old- 

 est and largest buiding, has brought great loss 

 to the college and has greatly disabled four 

 science departments. 



College Hall, which originally contained the 

 whole college community, at the time of the 

 fire was a dormitory for two hundred and 

 fifteen students, and also held the offices of the 

 administration, the lecture rooms for the 

 greater part of the college, and the labora- 

 tories of the departments of geology, physics, 



