Decembee 4, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



831 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 



The one hundred and seventy-second regular 

 meeting of the society was held at Columbia Uni- 

 versity on Saturday, October 31. The attendance 

 at the morning and afternoon sessions included 

 thirty-eight members. Vice-president L. P. Eisen- 

 hart occupied the chair. The Council announced 

 the election of the following persons to member- 

 ship ia the Society: Dr. H. R. Kingston, Univer- 

 sity of Manitoba; Mr. Colin MaoLennaa, Havana 

 Electric Railway, Light and Power Company; Mr. 

 E. E. Moots, Walla Walla, Wash. ; Mr. C. N. Rey- 

 nolds, Jr., Harvard University; Dr. Joseph Rosen- 

 baum. New Haven, Conn.; Dr. Joseph Slepian, 

 Cornell University; Dr. Anna H. Tappan, Iowa 

 State College; Dr. Mabel M. Young, Wellesley 

 College. Several applications for membership 

 were lost in the fire in the society's ofiSce; the 

 secretary will be glad of any information regard- 

 ing these. Pour new applications were received. 

 A list of nominations of officers and other mem- 

 bers of the council was prepared for the official 

 ballot for the annual election ra January. A com- 

 mittee was appointed to audit the treasurer's ac- 

 counts for the current year. Arrangements , were 

 made for adjusting the insurance on the property 

 of the society destroyed by the fire and for refit- 

 ting the office with the most essential appliances. 

 The following papers were read at this meet- 

 ing: 



G. M. Green : " On completely integrable systems 

 of homogeneous linear partial differential equa- 

 tions. ' ' 



G. A. Pf eiffer : ' ' Contributions to the conf ormal 

 geometry of analytic arcs." 



C. A. Pischer: "Conditions for a minimum of 

 an m-fold integral." 



Mr. E. C. Kemble: "Note on the definition of 

 work. ' ' 



H. S. White: "Census of the triad systems on 

 15 letters." 



Edward Kasner:. "A law of reciprocity in the 

 calculus of variations." 



K. P. Williams: "Concerning a certain totally 

 discontinuous function. ' ' 



T. H. Gronwall: "Some remarks on conf ormal 

 representation. ' ' 



The Southwestern Section of the society will 

 meet at the University of Nebraska on November 

 28. The Chicago meeting of the society will be 

 held on December 28-29, and the annual meeting 

 in New York on January 1-2. At the annual 

 meeting President E. B. Van Vleck will deliver his 



presidential address on "The rSle of the point 

 set theory in geometry and dynamics." 



F. N. Cole, 

 Secretary 



THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



At a meeting of the American Philosophical Soci- 

 ety held on November 6, Professor Eric Doolittle 

 made a communication on ' ' The Determination of 

 the Longitude of the Flower Observatory of the 

 University of Pennsylvania. ' ' This determination 

 was effected by an employment of the wireless sig- 

 nals sent out by our government through the de- 

 partment of the Navy in their recent important 

 international longitude campaign. 



As is well known to astronomers, a long series 

 of these wireless signals were interchanged on 

 each night, from October, 1913, to March of the 

 present year, between the powerful wireless station 

 at Radio, Virginia, and the station at the Eiffel 

 tower. The result of this work has, of course, not 

 yet been reached definitively, but from the pre- 

 liminary reductions it seems evident that the dif- 

 ference in longitude between these two widely sep- 

 arated stations will be determined with an accuracy 

 which has never before been approached. 



The process of determining the longitude of the 

 Flower Observatory was described in detail by the 

 lecturer, the very full directions sent by the Naval 

 Observatory to the other observatories of our 

 country having been closely followed in the work. 

 The observations were continued from November 

 17 to December 20; the results of the 55 compari- 

 sons were in unexpectedly close agreement. The 

 probable error of the final mean was but 0.015 

 sec, though it is probable that the effects of 

 the personal equation have not been entirely elim- 

 inated from this result. The variation of the in- 

 dividual values was considerably less than that of 

 those obtained three years ago by the ordinary 

 telegraphic method, but the final value, as found, 

 was about 0.1 sec. smaller than that found previ- 

 ously. It is evident, however, that the wireless 

 method is one of extreme accuracy and probably 

 the most accurate of all methods available. 



The success of this work is due in no small de- 

 gree to the continued courtesy and help of the ■ 

 officials of the Naval Observatory. From no ac- 

 count of wireless longitude determination, how- 

 ever brief, should there be omitted a word of ap- 

 preciation of the work which they have now so 

 nearly completed — a work excellently planned 

 and ably executed, which is a contribution of en- 

 during value to the science of exact astronomy. 



