Apeil 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



533 



VNIVESSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



A CONTRIBUTION of $50,000 from Mrs. E. H. 

 Harriman to the endowment fund of Barnard 

 College, Columbia University, is announced 

 toward the million dollar fund now being 

 raised for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 

 institution $550,000 is now pledged. 



Dr. J. B. Johnston, professor of neurology 

 in the department of anatomy of the Univer- 

 sity of Minnesota, has been appointed pro- 

 fessor in the department of animal biology in 

 the College of Science, Literature and the Arts, 

 and dean of that college from August 1, 1914. 



EiCHARD Laban Adams, a graduate of Massa- 

 chusetts Agricultural College and M.S. of the 

 University of California, has been appointed 

 assistant professor of agronomy in the Uni- 

 versity of California. James Alexander Arm- 

 strong, a graduate of 1910 of the University 

 of California, and now chief chemist of the 

 Union Sugar Company at Betteravia, Cali- 

 fornia, has been appointed field assistant in 

 agricultural extension in the university. 



Dr. E. G. Kennard, of Cornell University, 

 has been appointed instructor in physics at 

 the University of Minnesota. 



Mr. a. V. Hill has been appointed to the 

 Humphrey Owen Jones lectureship in phys- 

 ical chemistry, at the University of Cam- 

 bridge. 



DISCUSSION AND COSSESPONDENCE 

 GYROSCOPIC quanta 



In the note^ on gravitationally produced 

 vortices in the ether and their relation to 

 Planck's quantum theory, attention should 

 perhaps have been called to some additional 

 deductions. 



For example, that it necessarily follows 

 from the writer's electrostatic-doublet vortex 

 theory of matter,^ that the energy radiated 

 when a distortional ether wave strikes an 



1 Science, October 17, 1913. 



2 See papers referred to 1889-1900 in previous 

 note. 



atom will be given off in quanta and be pro- 

 portional to the frequency. 



The simplest way of seeing this is to take 

 the well-knovra experiment in which a gyro- 

 scope is held in the hand and the body re- 

 volved first in one direction and then in the 

 other. On turning the body in one direction 

 no effect is produced on the gyroscope. On 

 turning in the other direction the gyroscope 

 resists and is upset, and the axis then points 

 in the opposite direction. 



It may easily be shown that the amount of 

 work done in upsetting the gyroscope varies 

 directly as the angular velocity of rotation of 

 the body, i. e., in the case of the atom and 

 ether wave, is directly proportional to the 

 frequency. 



It will be seen that this type of atom is 

 somewhat different from any of those hereto- 

 fore proposed. For example, instead of the 

 electrons being numerically equal to one half 

 the atomic weight the electrons can be numeri- 

 cally equal to the atomic weight, but only one 

 haK of them affected by any given ether 

 displacement. 



In addition, the stable equilibrium condi- 

 tions of this type of atom are comparatively 

 simple and the positive nucleus may be made 

 to vanish, i. e., can be formed of a number 

 of negative electrons as pointed out in a 

 previous paper. 



Reginald A. Fessenden 



Brookline, Mass., 

 March 1, 1914 



MULTIPLE FACTORS IN HUMAN SKLN COLOR 



A RECENT article by E. C. MacDowelP on 

 " Multiple Factors in Mendelian Inheritance " 

 is highly significant in its explanation of 

 cases of apparently " blended " inheritance. 

 The author gives a clear historical summary 

 of experiments made by various investigators, 

 beginning with Nilsson-Ehle's studies on oats 

 and wheat first published in 1909. The orig- 

 inal work reported is upon sizes in rabbit hy- 

 brids. It is a continuation of Castle's well- 



1 Jour. Exper. Zoology, Vol. XVI., No. 2, pp. 

 177-194, 1914. 



