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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



CIRCULATING PROFESSORS 

 Harvard and Columbia Universities 

 have for several years maintained an 

 exchange of professors with the Prus- 

 sian government, and both universities 

 have recently made similar arrange- 

 ments for Paris. Columbia has had at 

 least one visiting professor from Co- 

 penhagen, and Wisconsin has recently 

 obtained a Karl Schurz endowment for 

 German professors. Each of our lead- 

 ing universities has lectureships which 

 are frequently filled by foreign men of 

 science and scholars; and there are cer- 

 tain extra university courses, such as 

 the Lowell lectures in Boston and those 

 of the Brooklyn Institute. Thus during 

 the month Professor Svante Arrhenius, 

 of Stockholm, has been giving the Silli- 

 man lectures at Yale University; Pro- 

 fessor L. T. Hobhouse, of London, 

 lectures at Columbia, and Sir John 

 Murray, of Edinburgh, a course of 

 Lowell lectures. Our students and 

 teachers have for years gone abroad in 

 swarms; foreign students are begin- 

 ning to frequent our universities, and 

 foreign men of science, scholars and 

 publicists to visit our institutions. 

 Several international congresses have 

 been held in this country and others 

 will follow in due course. 



All this exchange of men and ideas 

 has been stimulating and fruitful. Up 

 to the present Ave have on the whole 

 played the part of the provinces, pay- 

 ing men to come to us and paying for 

 the privilege of visiting them. We 

 have in the main been content to ex- 

 change our money for their ideas. 

 With other American republics and 

 with Japan and China conditions have 

 been reversed. With the older Euro- 

 pean nations they are changing; col- 

 lectively they still overshadow the 

 United States, but we can compare 



our institutions and our culture with 

 those of Germany, Prance or Great 

 Britain on tolerably equal terms. 



The official exchange of professors 

 with Berlin has probably been the least 

 successful part of this movement. The 

 visiting professors learn, but their 

 teaching is not particularly profitable. 

 Books and journals are better ways to 

 communicate to one country the scien- 

 tific work of another, and the foreign 

 language is a bar to oral teaching. A 

 German professor lecturing in his own 

 language for a week in each of twenty 

 American universities would perform a 

 more useful service than in attempting 

 to give regular class-room instruction 

 in one of tuem. Incidentally it may 

 be noted that attendance at court func- 

 tions or failure to attend them seems 

 not to cultivate the sense of humor of 

 the American professor. 



The eastern seaboard plays somewhat 

 the same part toward the western and 

 southern sections as Europe does to the 

 United States. Students from other 

 parts of the country frequent the east- 

 ern universities and their professors 

 lecture elsewhere. But the first official 

 arrangement for an exchange of pro- 

 fessors among American institutions 

 has just ueen announced by Harvard 

 University. A professor is to be sent 

 annually to four colleges in the middle 

 west— Colorado, Grinnell, Knox and 

 Beloit — spending an eighth of a year 

 at each, and the college sends one of 

 its junior officers to Harvard, where he 

 takes part in the regular instruction 

 and may at the same time pursue grad- 

 uate studies. The scheme is doubtless 

 intended to draw students to Harvard 

 and in a sense usurps the functions of 

 the state university. But it appears to 

 be on the whole commendable. It is 

 certainly desirable for the officers of 





