May 26, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



801 



the new system find themselves able to do 

 so without extra work. This applies to 

 some public schools in New England and 

 to a large number in other parts of the 

 country. At present, there are only four- 

 teen public high schools which have sent to 

 Harvard College one boy a year for the 

 past ten years, and all of these are in east- 

 ern Massachusetts. 



These two results are primarily signifi- 

 cant for the college. The other desired re- 

 sults, if they come about, are broader in 

 their educational significance. 



3. Schools of the approved type will, so 

 far as Harvard College is concerned in the 

 matter, gain the freedom which they re- 

 quire for doing their best work, since the 

 new system will make it possible for them 

 to concentrate their efforts by treating 

 more thoroughly fewer subjects, or fewer 

 topics of a subject. The great need of stu- 

 dents in schools, as well as in colleges, is 

 that they should acquire a habit of doing 

 well what they undertake to do ; the great- 

 est evil in education at present is that stu- 

 dents are satisfied with mediocrity. 



4. The new system gives some help 

 toward an adjustment of the problem of 

 educating together in one school students 

 preparing for college and students prepar- 

 ing for other callings. It does not wholly 

 solve this problem, but it ought to tend 

 somewhat to relieve it. The problem itself 

 is insoluble. Preparation for a defijiite 

 vocation must be determined by the char- 

 acter and needs of that particular vocation, 

 and college is a vocation for a young man 

 of seventeen to twenty-one just as much as 

 service in a banking house or factory, and, 

 like those vocations, it has its own condi- 

 tions of fitness. Diflierent needs can not 

 all be provided for under one system of 

 education. Nevertheless, some parts of a 

 school course are an excellent preparation 

 both for college and for an immediate 



practical career, and the new system of 

 examinations, under which requirements in 

 specific subjects are kept as high as before 

 but the subjects less closely defined, will, 

 it is hoped, give as much freedom here as 

 the nature of the case permits. 



5. The new plan leads away from em- 

 phasis on single courses, and insists on the 

 significance of the education taken as a 

 whole. In accord with this underlying 

 idea it is free from all attempts to de- 

 termine the relative value of subjects as 

 expressed in numerical ratings. In this 

 respect it has a general educational im- 

 portance, and ought to remove many causes 

 of friction now existing between schools 

 and colleges. 



James Haedy Ropes 



Harvard University 



TEE BOLYAI PRIZE. U 

 INTEGRAL EQUATIONS 



In these latter years, Hilbert has above 

 all occupied himself with perfecting the 

 theory of integral equations. We know 

 that the foundations of this theory were 

 laid some years ago by Fredholm; since 

 then the fecundity of his method and the 

 facility with which it may be applied to all 

 the problems of mathematical physics ap- 

 prove themselves each day with more 

 luster. This is certainly one of the most 

 remarkable discoveries ever made in mathe- 

 matics, and for itself alone it would merit 

 the very highest recompense; if to-day, 

 however, it is not to the first inventor, but 

 to the author of important improvements, 

 that we have decided to award the Bolyai 

 prize, it is because we must take into con- 

 sideration not only Hilbert 's works on 

 integral equations, but the totality of his 

 achievement, which is of importance for the 

 most diverse branches of mathematical 

 science and of which the other parts of this 

 report permit us to appreciate the interest. 



