480 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 



able collections made by Mr. Nicoll during 

 tbe voyages have been presented to tbe Natural 

 History Museum by Lord Crawford, wbo is 

 one of the trustees of that institution. 



About thirty members of the New York 

 Physics Club are attending the free course of 

 lectures given to them by the Department of 

 Electrical Engineering at Columbia Univer- 

 sity. These will be followed by a course of 

 lectures in thermodynamics given by Pro- 

 fessor Charles E. Lueke, of the department of 

 mechanical engineering, from 4 to 5 p.m., 

 on Tuesdays in April. All teachers of physics 

 are invited to attend these lectures. 



The Harvard Engineering Society will hold 

 its tenth annual dinner at the Union on 

 March 21. Professor Hollis will preside, and 

 the following gentlemen will speak: President 

 Eliot, Frederick P. Fish "75, E. A. S. Clarke 

 '84, president of the Lackawanna Steel Com- 

 pany; George A. Kimball, chief engineer of 

 the Boston Elevated Eailway Company; H. 

 L. Smyth '83, professor of mining and metal- 

 lurgy; George A. McKay, president of the 

 Harvard Engineering Society; and others. 

 In connection with the dinner it is pro- 

 posed to organize an Association of Harvard 

 Engineers, and a meeting for this purpose 

 will be held at the Union on the same day. 



Professor Kamerlingh Ohnes, of Leiden, 

 announces that he has converted helium into 

 a solid. The last evaporating parts are said 

 to show considerable vapor pressures, as if 

 the liquid state is jumped over. 



We learn from the London Times that at a 

 meeting of the Royal Society held on the 

 fifth ult. Professor Thorpe, of the Govern- 

 ment Laboratory, presented a communication 

 on " The Atomic Weight of Radium," in 

 which he 'gave the results of an investigation 

 he had been commissioned to make by a com- 

 mittee of the society. About two years ago 

 the Royal Society received a considerable 

 amount of the residues from the uranium 

 workings of the mines at Joaehimsthal, in 

 Bohemia, belonging to the Austrian govern- 

 ment, in which material Madame Curie first 

 detected the existence of radium. These resi- 

 dues have been worked up, partly in France, 



and partly in London by Dr. Thorpe, who 

 extracted from them the radiimi chloride 

 which served for his determination of the 

 atomic weight of this rare element. Dr. 

 Thorpe finds from his experiments that the 

 atomic weight of radium is 227, which is in 

 almost exact agreement with the number re- 

 cently published by Madame Curie. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



An anonymous benefactor, considering that 

 the year 1909, in which biologists have de- 

 cided to celebrate in Cambridge the centenary 

 of Darwin's birth, is a suitable occasion for 

 founding a chair of biology, has offered a sum 

 of £300 a year towards this purpose on condi- 

 tion that it shall be the duty of the professor 

 to teach or make researches in heredity. The 

 council of the senate proposes to create a pro- 

 fessorship in biology for a period of five years 

 at an annual stipend of £700. 



The chancellor. Lord Rosebery, will visit 

 University College on the afternoon of March 

 26, and will formally open the new libraries 

 and the new south wing, which includes lec- 

 ture rooms for the faculty of arts, the de- 

 partments of geology, hygiene and experi- 

 mental psychology, also large extensions of 

 the departments of applied mathematics, of 

 mechanical, electrical and mimicipal engi- 

 neering, and accommodation for the new 

 hydraulic laboratory. 



Col. E. a. Wall, of Salt Lake City, has 

 established a research fellowship ($500) in 

 the State School of Mines, the engineering de- 

 partment of the University of Utah, located at 

 Salt Lake City. This fellowship is awarded 

 annually in June to some graduate student of 

 ability to promote research work in mining, 

 ore-dressing, or metallurgy. 



Professor Charles L. Beach, of the Uni- 

 versity of Vermont, has been elected presi- 

 dent of the Connecticut Agricultural College 

 at Storrs. 



M. Camille Matignon has been appointed 

 professor of mineral chemistry at the College 

 de France in succession to M. H. Le Chatelier, 

 who recently accepted the chair of general 

 chemistry at the Sorbonne. 



