SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1885. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE PRESI- 

 DENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



Professor Hubert Anson Newton, who is 

 the president of the American association for 

 the advancement of science, has held the chair 

 of mathematics in Yale College since 1856. 

 Virtually, he has had charge of the instructions 

 in that branch of 

 science at New 

 Haven since 1853, 

 when the college 

 was deprived, by 

 death, of the ser- 

 vices of Professor 

 Stanley. He had 

 evinced, in his 

 undergraduate 

 course, strong 

 proclivities tow- 

 ard mathemati- 

 cal studies ; and 

 his appointment 

 to a tutorship, 

 two years after 

 his graduation in 

 the class of 1850, 

 iindoubtedh' con- 

 firmed these pre- 

 dilections, and 

 opened to him the 

 career in which he 

 has won distinction at home and abroad. 



His outward life has been uneventful. From 

 the time when he entered college, almost forty 

 years ago, he has remained in New Ilaven, 

 assiduously devoted to the work of his pro- 

 fessorship. Occasional visits to Europe have 

 brought him into personal relations with the 

 mathematicians and the institutions of other 

 countries. Academic honors, as little sought 

 as the}^ were well deserved, have fallen upon 



No. 134. - 1885. 



him. He was made an associate editor, many 

 years ago, of the American journal of science^ 

 in whose pages his principal memoirs have ap- 

 peared ; he has been a vice-president in the 

 scientific association of which he is now the 

 head ; he was one of the original members of 

 the National academy of sciences. In the 

 Winchester observatory of Yale college, he is a 

 leading manager. The University of Michigan 

 conferred upon him, in 1868, the degree of 



doctor of laws. 



But he has still 

 stronger claims 

 than these to that 

 recognition which 

 his scientific 

 friends have be- 

 stowed b}' invit- 

 ing him to preside 

 over their meeting 

 at Ann Arbor. It 

 is as an astrono- 

 mer that he has 

 won his highest 

 reputation ; and, 

 as an astronomer, 

 his name is for- 

 ever to be asso- 

 ciated with the 

 discovery and 

 enunciation of 

 the laws of me- 

 teoric showers, so 

 mj'sterious when 

 he applied his mind to their investigation, so 

 comprehensible now 



Professor Newton came into the field of 

 meteors b}^ what might be called an official 

 inheritance. While he was an undergraduate, 

 Denison Olmsted, his teacher in astronomj^ 

 with Alexander C. Twining, Edward C. Her- 

 rick, and others whom they had enlisted, were 

 intent upon understanding the phenomena of 

 shooting-stars. The resplendent shower of 



