978 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 704 



In that time he was unremitting in his 

 efforts to secvire laboratory facilities for 

 the students. The crowning of his labors 

 in that direction came when the honorable 

 board of trustees, as the result of his insist- 

 ence, decided upon making one of this 

 magnificent group of buildings a labora- 

 tory for the teaching of chemistry. 



Professor Doremus, who never did any- 

 thing on a small scale, was an eloquent and 

 brilliant experimental lecturer. "Wien I 

 recall his charm of manner and courteous 

 hospitality, his tremendous influence over 

 the students of the college is easily under- 

 stood, and it has been attested by Pro- 

 fessor Eemsen to-day. 



It is fitting that his portrait be in this 

 room, but for reasons familiar to chemists 

 only a reproduction will remain here, but 

 the name on the doors will serve ever to 

 remind those who come of this successful 

 expounder of the principles of our science 

 through two generations. 



Professor Baskerville then addressed the 

 audience : 



If, when Wolcott Gibbs was first pro- 

 fessor in this college, he had to],d his 

 students that we should soon read the his- 

 tory of the stars, he would have been said 

 to be very erratic. Yet while he was stiU 

 here, Bunsen and Kirchoiii: invented the 

 spectroscope. "While he was here mauve 

 was discovered by Perkin and the coal-tar 

 color industry started. While here oil 

 was found in Pennsylvania and the great 

 petroleum industry begun. If Gibbs, who 

 was professor of physics and chemistry, 

 had early said that nations would soon 

 communicate across the depths of the 

 ocean by cables, he would have spoken to 

 incredulous listeners. Yet, as he left this 

 institution, Cyrus Field laid the cable and 

 "William Thomson made its operation prac- 

 ticable. 



If Doremus in the sixties had said that 

 within a score of years the human voice 



would be recognized after transmission by 

 wire for hundreds of miles, he wovild have 

 been laughed at. Yet Graham Bell con- 

 vinced the Emperor of Brazil and a dis- 

 tinguished group of interested scientific 

 people in Philadelphia that it was an 

 actuality. 



If in the eighties Doremus, for he also 

 was professor of physics and chemistry, 

 had said in those remarkable and instruct- 

 ive lectures of his, that we should soon 

 see through the human body, that nations 

 would communicate across land and sea 

 without connecting wires; if he had said 

 that chemical elements would be found de- 

 void of their characteristic property of 

 chemical affinity; if he had said that 

 chemical elements would be discovered 

 which spontaneously and without chemical 

 change produce vastly more energy than 

 that evidenced in the most violent chemical 

 reactions known— he would have been 

 thought of as a man of delusions. Yet 

 knowledge of all these things is common 

 property at present. 



In this day when a professor of chem- 

 istry publicly states that light and elec- 

 tricity are the same and that it is nearly 

 proved (one of our distinguished speakers 

 has done this and I believe he is right) 

 he is greeted with a tolerant smile. So 

 what of the "future in chemistry" in our 

 day and generation? No one is better 

 qualified to speak upon that subject than 

 Professor Wilder D. Bancroft, whose 

 esteemed and diplomatic grandfather 

 epitomized the past. Dr. Bancroft, having 

 drawn inspiration from the spirit of Gibbs 

 at Harvard, is a daring and far-seeing in- 

 vestigator, whose vivid imagination visual- 

 izes the realms of the unknown, ever, how- 

 ever, holding it within reason. 



Professor Bancroft then spoke upon 



THE FUTURE IN CHEMISTRY 



The future in chemistry! No two peo- 



