THE PROGRESS OF 
of the department of chemistry, Har- | 
vard University, and Professor Strat- 
ton, director of the National Bureau 
of Standards. 
SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS AND SCI- 
ENTIFIC MEN IN THE 
MIDDLE WEST 
Tue National Academy of Sciences 
is meeting in St. Louis as this issue 
of the Monruty goes to press; the 
American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Scienee, with a number of 
affiliated societies, will hold its convo- 
cation week meeting in Minneapolis at 
the end of December. The National 
Academy has only once before since its 
foundation in 1863 held a meeting west 
of the Atlantic seaboard. This meet- 
ing was at Chicago in the autumn of 
1903 and was fully as successful as the 
autumn meetings in eastern cities. 
The American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science has been more 
national in the range of its meetings, 
having in 1901 gone as far west as 
Denver and in 1905 as far south as 
New Orleans. It met in St. Louis in 
1903, in Madison in 1893 and in Min- 
neapolis in 1883. Some of the affiliated 
societies which last year met with the 
association will not go to Minneapolis, 
there being scientific meetings in 
Ithaca, New Haven, Princeton and 
Pittsburgh. Still the number of scien- 
tific men in the middle west is now so 
large that a successful meeting at Min- 
neapolis is assured. The University of 
Minnesota is one of the great state in- 
stitutions; in recent years it has had 
a notable growth, and its future is 
assured by the immense fund which 
the state holds for educational pur- 
poses. 
The fact that scientific men and 
their leaders are no longer concen- 
trated on the eastern seaboard is indi- 
cated by the residences of the retiring 
and the incoming presidents of the 
American Association—President Jor- 
dan on the Pacific coast and Professor 
Michelson in Chicago. A 
study of the origin and distribution of 
statistical | 

SCIENCE 615 
American men of science, recently 
made by the editor of this journal and 
published in the issues of SCIENCE for 
November 4 and 11, shows that the 
central and western slates now possess 
a fair proportion of our leading scien- 
tific men and that they produce even 
more than they retain, The thousand 
leading scientific men of the country 
were selected by asking ten eminent 
men of science in each of twelve sci- 
ences to arrange those who had done 
research work in the order of the value 
of their work. 
Of these leading scientific men there 
were in Boston 126, in New York 120 
and in Washington 109. These three 
cities remain our chief scientific cen- 
ters, but none the less there has been 
a significant westward movement in 
recent years. The list referred to has 
been made up twice, and it is possible 
to give the changes which have taken 
place in four years. In this short 
period the University of Chicago has 
gained nine men, the University of Illi- 
nois eleven and the University of Wis- 
consin twelve. 
Even more significant is a considera- 
tion of the origin of the 238 men who 
have attained scientific standing be- 
tween the compilation of the two lists 
and obtain for the first time this year 
a place among the thousand. Massa- 
chusetts has the highest birthrate of 
scientific men now as before, but it has 
sunk from 109 per million of its popu- 
lation to 85. The productivity has 
fallen in every one of the Atlantic 
states, from 47 to 36 in New York, 
from 42 to 17 in New Jersey. from 23 
to 19 in Pennsylvania and from 38 to 
13 in Maryland. On the other hand, 
it has increased in all but one of the 
north central states, from 36 to 74 in 
Michigan, which state now stands next 
to Massachusetts as a center for the 
| production of scientific men. 
Most of the north central states do 
not as yet retain the men whom they 
produce. Thus twice as many have 
been born in Michigan, Ohio and Indi- 
ana as reside in those states. Still the 
