Drown was consulting chemist to the Massachusetts State Board of Health till the time of his death.
In 1895 Dr. Drown was called to the presidency of Lehigh University at a time when that institution's influence was at a low ebb. With rare courage and a faith in the institution, since justified by events, he restored to the university its own wavering faith and waning courage, gave it a good business administration, widened its educational horizons, and, by his sympathetic, intelligent guidance, fostered the steady, healthful growth characteristic of recent years.
During President Drown's administration the number of students has been increased from 325 to 650. The teaching staff has been proportionally increased and the grades of assistant professor and assistant, characteristic of modern university organization, have been introduced. Mineralogy and metallurgy have been divided into independent departments; likewise geology has been separated from mining, and electrical engineering from physics. A department of biology, inclusive of bacteriology, has been established, with adequate laboratory equipment, and a department of economics and history, intended equally for students in engineering and in arts. The department of philosophy and psychology, formerly an adjunct to the chaplaincy, has been given its independence, a psychological laboratory and courses in pedagogy being added. Hand in hand with President Drown's policy of expansion and differentiation went that of correlation. The School of General Literature has grown steadily by the side of the technical schools, which in
turn have been increasingly hospitable to the introduction of liberal studies. Dr. Drown had long cherished a plan to evolve a six-year course fitted to furnish both a broad culture and an adequate training for the professional work of the engineer.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
It is reported that Nobel prizes will be awarded to Sir William Ramsay in chemistry and to Lord Rayleigh in physics.—The Royal Society has awarded its Rumford medal to Dr. Ernest Rutherford, professor of physics at McGill University, for his researches on radio-activity.
Professor Charles A. Young, who celebrated his seventieth birthday on December 15, will retire from the chair of astronomy at Princeton University at the close of the present year and will become professor emeritus.—Dr. George H. Howison, professor of philosophy in the University of California, celebrated his seventieth birthday on November twenty-fifth, when he was presented with a Festschrift prepared by his former students.
During the recent excursion of the Eighth International Geographic Congress to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona, a meeting was held in memory of Major J. W. Powell, in which his exploration of the canyon, his western surveys and his work as director of the United States Geological Survey and as organizer of the Bureau of Ethnology were briefly described. At the close of the meeting it was resolved to erect a monument in memory of Powell on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Grand Canyon.
