Decembee 17, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



847 



plan of the second floor. The arrangement 

 is similar, not only on both ends of the 

 third floor, but on the western end of the 

 ground floor. Rooms are provided in the 

 basement for the storage and handling of 

 apparatus, a workshop, storage batteries, 

 switchboards and other purposes. But a 

 complete description of this laboratory and 

 of its virtues would take far too much time 

 for the present occasion.^ It is enough to 

 say that the three years' work in it have 

 shown it to be ideally adapted to the sort of 

 investigation for which it had been planned. 

 In the front hall stands a bronze bust of 

 Wolcott Gibbs with a marble tablet bearing 

 the inscription: 



wolcott gibbs 

 Feb 21 1S22-Dec 9 1908 



RDMrOED PROrESSOR 

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



1863-1887 EMERITUS 1887-1908 



PATHFINDER IN AMERICAN CHEMISTRY 



"With the building came a fund bearing 

 an income sufBcient for heating and janitor 

 service, but not enough to purchase any 

 suitable amount of special apparatus. 

 Therefore, the subsidies which the director 

 has received from the Carnegie Institution 

 of "Washington have been of very great use 

 in providing part of the equipment of scien- 

 tific apparatus and additional expert assist- 

 ance. Indeed, without such help but little 

 could have been done. I take great pleas- 

 ure, therefore, in expressing my indebted- 

 ness to this institution, and feel that it 

 shares with Harvard University and the 

 generous founders in any credit which may 

 be attached to the output of the laboratory. 

 Also to the able assistants and advanced 

 students who have helped me with so much 

 patience and enthusiasm, I am deeply 

 grateful. Twenty-four in number, they 

 have been, of course, chiefly Americans (by 



2 A fuller description of the laboratory was pub- 

 lished in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin for March 

 26, 1913. 



no means all Harvard men), but the list 

 includes four Canadians, an Icelander, a 

 Dane, a Japanese, and a German. More- 

 over, the laboratory now harbors two 

 guests, one conducting a research on the 

 chemical activity of radium emanations and 

 the other on the acidity of sea water. These 

 two investigators are collaborating with col- 

 leagues who have no such suitable place 

 elsewhere to offer for the investigations. 

 Concerning these researches, however, it is 

 not my province to speak. 



"What now has been the first fruit of this 

 building? For the architectural shell is 

 only a means, not an end in itself; and ex- 

 cept as a memorial its existence is justified 

 only by the work accomplished within it. 

 During the past three years 24 papers have 

 been published from this laboratory, and a 

 number of other investigations have been 

 almost finished and are being prepared for 

 publication. Their character varies widely, 

 ranging from almost pure chemistry to 

 almost pure physics, but, in spite of the 

 diversity, there is, for the most part, a com- 

 mon aim underlying them all. This aim is 

 a careful study of the fundamental prop- 

 erties of the chemical elements — those sub- 

 stances which constitute the basis of our 

 visible and tangible universe. Among these 

 fundamental properties may be mentioned 

 their atomic weights, their densities and 

 compressibilities, their electromotive be- 

 havior and heat of combination with other 

 elements and, finally, the physical and 

 chemical properties of their simple com- 

 pounds. Let us consider briefly the sev- 

 eral investigations already published and 

 now in progress. 



Turning, first, to the study of atomic 

 weights, three investigations on this subject 

 have already yielded publications. The 

 first of these was a research upon the atomic 

 weight of carbon, in which sodium carbon- 

 ate was prepared in an unusual degree of 



