October 9, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



515 



courage or reward young scholars engaged in 

 work in the directions in which Poincare led, 

 namely, mathematical analysis, celestial me- 

 chanics, mathematical physics and scientific 

 philosophy. The members of the executive 

 committee are Messrs. Appell, Lamy and 

 Daboux, and there is a large and distinguished 

 international committee. Copies of the medal 

 will be sent to subscribers, who should send 

 their subscriptions to M. Ernest Lebon, Rue 

 des Ecoles 4, Paris. 



Dr. Erwin Baue, of Berlin, who was to 

 have been the Carl Schurz memorial professor 

 at the University of Wisconsin during the 

 first semester this year, was stopped by the 

 English on his way to Java and was held for 

 a time at Port Said. He managed, however, 

 to get away and, after many difficulties, to 

 return to Berlin, where he is now stationed in 

 the Marine Office. It will be impossible for 

 him to come to America before the end of the 



Dr. Wilhelm Eoerster, professor of as- 

 tronomy at Berlin, who holds a doctor's de- 

 gree from Oxford, takes objection to the 

 movement to renounce English degrees in a 

 letter to the Berliner Tagehlatt, quoted in the 

 London Times, on the ground that it is un- 

 wise to proclaim a divorce from the "learned 

 world" of England because of England's 

 "wicked policy." 



Dr. Eugen de Cholnoky, professor of 

 geography at the University of Kolozsvar, 

 Hungary, has been elected president of the 

 Eoyal Hungarian Geographical Society, 

 Budapest, for the term expiring in 1917. The 

 former president. Professor Louis de Loczy, 

 director of the Eoyal Hungarian Geological 

 Survey and the well-known China explorer, 

 became honorary president. 



De. Otto Finsch, the well-known ethnog- 

 rapher and geographer of Brunswick, cele- 

 brated on August 8 his seventy-fifth birth- 



Dr. Woldemar Voigt, professor of mathe- 

 matical physics at Gottingen, exchange pro- 

 fessor from Germany, will probably not be 

 able to give his courses at Harvard Univer- 

 sity during the second half-year, although it 

 is still hoped that the war may not interfere 

 with the arrangements between Harvard and 

 the French and German universities. 



Professor Pierre Boutroux, of the depart- 

 ment of mathematics of Princeton University, 

 has remained in France in the service of the 

 French government. 



The British Medical Journal states that Dr. 

 Noyons, professor of physiology, at Louvain, 

 has recently distinguished himself by his 

 heroic conduct in remaining with his wife 

 among the ruins of Louvain ministering to 

 the wounded — Germans as well as Belgians. 

 When the population of the city was in- 

 formed that every inhabitant of the town 

 must leave immediately, in order that the 

 town might be razed to the ground by ar- 

 tillery, Dr. Noyons and his wife decided to 

 remain in order to protect the 150 wounded 

 who could not be removed in time. 



Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf, professor of 

 zoology at Oberlin College, has retired from 

 the faculty and is devoting his entire time to 

 research in a private laboratory recently 

 erected on his own grounds. 



Sir Ernest Shackleton and the members 

 of his Transantarctic Expedition left Lon- 

 don on September 18 for the South Polar re- 

 gions. The explorers departed in two sec- 

 tions, the portion for the Ross Sea or New 

 Zealand side of the Antarctic leaving in the 

 morning via Tilbury for Tasmania, and the 

 Weddell Sea section, including Sir Ernest 

 Shackleton, leaving for South America later 

 in the day. The Endurance, the ship of the 

 Weddell Sea party, left Plymouth on August 

 8. The Ross Sea ship Aurora is to leave some 

 Australian port about the beginning of De- 

 cember. 



Dr. W. S. Bruce, of the Scottish Spitz- 

 bergen Expedition, accompanied by Mr. J. 

 V. Burn-Murdock, Mr. E. M. Craig and Mr. 

 John H. Keoppern, arrived in the Tyne from 

 Bergen on September 18. The party left 

 Newcastle on July 9 for scientific explora- 

 tion in Spitzbergen. 



