THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



413 



Dr. E. H. Starling, 



of the University of London, President 



of the Physiological Section. 



It is certainly a remarkable fact that 

 with a much smaller number of work- 

 ing men of science than Germany or 

 the United States, Great Britain is 

 able to produce so many great leaders. 

 Lord Rayleigh was president of the 

 Montreal meeting twenty-five years ago 

 and Lord Kelvin president of the sec- 

 tion for mathematics and physics. It 

 might be supposed that Great Britain 

 could not again furnish two physicists 

 of the same class, but at Winnipeg Sir 

 J. J, Thomson presided over the asso- 

 ciation and Professor Rutherford over 

 the section, both recipients of Nobel 

 prizes and commanding the course of 

 modern physics. 



In his address Professor Thomson 

 referred first to the local conditions 

 of the meeting and the great develop- 

 ment of Manitoba, reminding his hear- 

 ers that even the enterprise and energy 

 of the people and the richness of the 

 country could not have accomplished 

 this without the resources coming from 

 the labors of men of science. After 

 discussing certain educational prob- 

 lems, including the dangers from the 



examination system and early special- 

 ization, the speaker reviewed the more 

 recent developments of physics and the 

 new conception of physical processes 

 with which he himself has been so 

 intimately concerned. As he aptly 

 said in his concluding sentences: "The 

 new discoveries made in physics in 

 the last few years, and the ideas and 

 potentialities suggested by them, have 

 had an effect upon the workers in that 

 subject akin to that produced in litera- 

 ture by the Renaissance. Enthusiasm 

 has been quickened, and there is a 

 hopeful, youthful, perhaps exuberant, 

 spirit abroad which leads men to make 

 with confidence experiments which 

 would have been thought fantastic 

 twenty years ago." 



Professor Rutherford naturally chose 

 for discussion one of the subjects in 

 the newer physics with which his own 

 work — largely carried on in a Canadian 

 university — has been concerned, name- 

 ly, the present position of the atomic 

 theory and the values of certain funda- 

 mental atomic magnitudes. Before the 



Sir William Henry White, 



formerly Director of Naval Construction 



of the British Navy, President of 



the Engineering Section. 



