Mat 18, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



793 



Considerable attention has been paid to the 

 local fauna and important additions made to 

 the series of nestlings; other work has been 

 the preparation of series of skins to illustrate 

 the progress of moult from beginning to end. 



In ethnology three halls, devoted to material 

 from the northwest coast, have been opened 

 and two others are in course of preparation. 



The report is illustrated by a number of ex- 

 cellent plates. F. A. L. 



REPORT ON THE BOLYAI PRIZE. 



Having just received from its author, G. 



Kados, of Budapest, the detailed report of the- 



Commission on the Bolyai Prize to the Hun- 



. garian Academy of Sciences, I venture to 



translate a few excerpts. 



On the occasion of the hundredth anniver- 

 sary of the birth of John Bolyai was estab- 

 lished in honor of this marvelous genius a 

 prize of ten thousand crowns, to go every five 

 years to the author of the best work in mathe- 

 matics published during that lustrum, account 

 being taken of the entire productivity of the 

 winner. The first decision is as follows: The 

 committee states first that the new view-points 

 dominating modem mathematical investiga- 

 tion have brought out a very notable number 

 of mathematical works whose high worth the 

 committee gladly recognizes ; but just this cir- 

 cumstance has made the committee's problem 

 of exceeding difficulty. 



The committee was convinced it should 

 best fulfil the intention of the academy by 

 deciding only to consider those works having 

 the most important influence upon the general 

 development of mathematics. In this spirit 

 the committee could limit itself to the con- 

 sideration of the works of two investigators 

 whose merits are acknowledged on all hands, 

 David KiTbert and Henri Poincare. 



The committee now has reached the unan- 

 imous decision to give the Bolyai prize to 

 Henri Poincare, taking into consideration, in 

 the sense of the statutes, all his work, begin- 

 ning in 1879 and now having completed a 

 cycle of the entire domain of mathematics, 

 opening everywhere to mathematical investi- 

 gation new points of view. The committee 

 has, however, at the same time decided, in 



order to give Professor Hilbert a very special 

 mark of their high appreciation, to charge 

 their reporter — contrary to the usual custom — 

 to discuss Professor Hilbert's works with the 

 same detail as those of Professor Poincare. 

 Por their universal significance is in full 

 measure prized and the committee is con- 

 vinced they are called to a role of ever greater 

 importance. 



Professor Eados now begins his report by 

 saying Henri Poincare is at the present mo- 

 ment unquestionably the most powerful in- 

 vestigator in the domain of mathematics and 

 mathematical physics. His strongly marked 

 individuality lets us recognize in him the in- 

 tuitive genius drawing the inspiration for his 

 wide-reaching researches from the exhaustless 

 fountain of geometric and physical intuition, 

 yet capable also of working this out in detail 

 with marvelous logical keenness. With his 

 brilliant inventive genius he is distinguished 

 by the capacity for sharp and successful gen- 

 eralization of mathematical relations, which 

 oft empowers him to push far out the boun- 

 daries of knowledge in the most widely differ- 

 ent domains of pure and applied mathematics. 

 This is shown even in his first memoirs on 

 automorphic functions, with which he begins 

 the series of those brilliant publications, which 

 must be reckoned with the greatest mathe- 

 matical achievements of all time. Eados 

 plunges now into detail, finishing a necessarily 

 fragmentary account of Poincare's more than 

 300 publications, with a mention of his books, 

 of which we will only name two, ' Science and 

 Hypothesis' (1902) and 'The Value of Sci- 

 ence' (1905). 



Finally, he says, permit me to make men- 

 tion of his last book, ' The Value of Science ' 

 (1905), in which he in a way has laid down 

 the scientist's creed. 



I wish from this intensely interesting book 

 to quote a bit verbatim where he carries out 

 in detail the contrast between the intuitional 

 and the logical way of thinking. In regard 

 to the logicians, then says Poincare : 



Rejecting the aid of the imagination, which, as 

 we have seen, is not always infallible, they can 

 advance without fear of deceiving themselves. 

 Happy, therefore, are those who can do without 



