IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
7.5 
giving advanced courses and graduating students prepared to enter upon grad- 
uate work in Physics; and several teachers of Physics have come into 
Iowa colleges comparatively recently who should further strengthen the under- 
graduate teaching of Physics in the state in this respect. At the University 
there has been some graduate work for a number of years. Under Professor 
Veblen this was chiefly by men who after graduation were held for a time as 
graduate assistants or as instructors. Under Professor Karl E. Guthe — a real 
physicist and enthusiast — came a development of graduate work, and now 
with the new Physics laboratory, equipped, manned and directed, it would seem 
that Physics. was entering into its place in the graduate school of the State. 
Some research is being carried on at the State College by students, chiefly, 
however, by undergraduates and in Applied Physics. 
The subject matter of Physics as well as the form in which it is available 
has made relatively equal progress in the quarter century. Maxwell’s electro- 
magnetic wave theory, then on the point of being confirmed by the discoveries 
of Hertz (1888), is generally accepted, and but a small gap remains between 
the known radiations from hot bodies and the known electro-magnetic waves, 
and we are just now calling for congressional enactment regulating the use 
of them! The induction motor, that has made long distance transmission of 
power practicable, was just in embryo. (Perraris had built a small two-phase 
motor in 1885, but did not consider a system requiring more than two wires for 
transmission practical and did not publish until 1888.) Electrolytic conduction 
was not satisfactorily explained; the work of Arrhenius and others on solutions, 
that clarified matters in the field of Electro-Chemistry and gave us the Physical 
Chemistry of today, was just beginning to appear at that time. A decade later we 
have the recognition of the electron by Professor J. J. Thomson, the discovery 
of the Roentgen ray, the Becquerel rays— “alpha,” “beta” and “gamma” — the 
separation of the radio-active substances and the introduction of a new 
science — Radioactivity — now just in its beginnings, possibly at a stage com- 
parable with that of Chemistry before the discovery of any means of accelerat- 
ing or controling chemical actions. 
The productive work in the State has been chiefly pedagogical, although 
sufficient research has gone forward to contribute some reports at almost every 
meeting of this Academy since 1895. For the purpose of this paper I have 
collected chronologically the titles of papers on physical topics that have been 
presented before the Academy. 
1895: Andrews, President’s Address; Recent Advances in the Theory of 
Solutions. 
Andrews and Ende, Studies of the Physical Properties of Lithium 
Chloride in Amyl Alcohol. 
Franklin, New Method of Studying the Magnetic Properties of Iron. 
Design of Transformers and Alternate Current Motors. Note on the 
Phenomena of Diffraction in Sound. 
1896: Hall, Physical Theories of Gravitation. Unit Systems and Dimensions. 
1901: Veblen, President’s Address; The Relation of Physics to the Other Ma- 
terial Sciences. Some Improved Laboratory De'^ices. 
Boehm, A Ruling Engine for making Zone-plates. 
Smith, N. F., The Influence of Temperature on the Index of Refraction 
of a Gas when heated at a Constant Volume. 
