474 Henry Andrews Bumstead. 



majority of doctors' theses in physics coming from Yale 

 during* the last fifteen years. He was always generous 

 in giving his time and ideas to others, and never asked 

 the students who worked under him to share with him the 

 credit of authorship. 



Eecognition of his ability as a scientist has come from 

 many sources. Long a member of the American Physical 

 Society, he has been its president and an editor of its 

 organ of publication, the Pliysical Revieiv. As Vice 

 President of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, he delivered the annual address at the 

 meeting in Pittsburgh in December 1917, choosing for his 

 title ''Present Tendencies in Theoretical Physics." In 

 1913 he was elected a member of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, the highest honor which can come to any scien- 

 tist from an American institution. He was a fellow of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a 

 member of the American Philosophical Society and of the 

 Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Univer- 

 sity of Toronto conferred on him the honorary degree of 

 Doctor of Science the June preceding his death. 



Not only was Bumstead 's advice always in demand on 

 the part of his scientific confreres, but it was frequently 

 sought by those whose chief interests lay along the lines 

 of the so-called humanities. As an example may be cited 

 Henry Adams' request for a critical opinion of those 

 chapters of ''The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma" 

 which contained the author's bold excursion on the scien- 

 tific method. Bumstead pointed out the dimensional 

 difficulties involved in applying the "law of squares" to 

 historical phases, and repeated his criticism to Brooks 

 Adams when the latter was preparing his brother's manu- 

 script for publication. In this instance, however, science 

 lost that history might be justified. 



With the entrance of the United States into the World 

 War, Bumstead placed all his time and ability at the 

 service of his country. He was a member of the national 

 committee appointed to examine the merits of proposed 

 anti-submarine devices, and he took an active interest in 

 the experimental development of such devices which was 

 carried on at New London. In February, 1918, he went 

 to London as Scientific Attache of the American Embassy. 

 There his tact and wide acquaintance among men of 

 science in Great Britain enabled him to perform a service 



