166 Scient ific In tell igen ce. 



It is interesting to note in this connection that Professor A. A. 

 Michelson, of the University of Chicago, has recently been 

 awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for 1907. The same gentle- 

 man has received the award of the Copley medal of the Royal 

 Society of London. 



The other recipients of the Nobel prizes in science are Prof. 

 Buchner of Berlin in chemistry and Dr. Laveran of Paris in 

 medicine. 



8. The Elements of Mechanics ; by W. S. Franklin and 

 Barry Macnutt. Pp. 283. New York, 1907 (The Macmillan 

 Company). — The authors have succeeded in making a dry sub- 

 ject for the most part genuinely interesting reading. This is 

 achieved by a pleasing style and the choice of very up-to-date 

 illustrations, such as unbalanced torque in a fan blower, the use 

 of the gyroscope to prevent rolling in a ship, etc. The chapter 

 on Physical Arithmetic is especially good, and there is an abun- 

 dance of fresh and well graded exercises for numerical calcula- 

 tion. Perhaps too little attention is paid to rigid proof of 

 formulae, and some topics are treated rather cursorily. 



An introductory chapter, which might well be omitted, abounds 

 in passages hardly less surprising than the following : — 



"The Laws of Motion ! You, my young friend, must have in 

 " some measure my own youthful view, which, to tell the truth, 

 "I have never wholly lost." .... " The Method of Science ! 

 " That, my young friend, is where constraint and exactness lie." 

 . . . " The change of thought .... which must 

 " take place before you can enter into practical life may best be 

 " expressed by the life history of a remarkable little animal, the 

 " axoloti" .... etc., etc. w. b. 



Obituary. 

 Professor Charles A. Young, LL.D. 



On January 3, 1908, there occurred an eclipse of the sun, and 

 on the same day the life of Professor Young, the .eminent student 

 of solar physics and observer of many eclipses, came to its close. 

 Coming so soon after the death of Professor Asaph Hall, the 

 vacancy thus left in the ranks of the older astronomers of Amer- 

 ica will be widely felt and not easily filled. 



Charles Augustus Young was born at Hanover, N. H, on 

 December 15, 1834, the son of Tra Young, Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy and Astronomy at Dartmouth, and grandson of 

 Ebenezer Adams, an earlier occupant of the same chair. His 

 early education was at home, and he graduated from Dartmouth 

 College in 1853, at the age of only nineteen, but at the head of 

 his class. From 1853 to 1856 he taught in the Classical depart- 

 ment of Phillips Andover Academy, pursuing also a course of 

 theological study during the last year. From 1856 to 1865 he 

 was Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Astron- 

 omy in Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio; and in 1865 

 returned to follow his father and grandfather as Professor of 



