He was actively engaged in the civil war, first in the defenses of Washington and later as chief engineer and senior aide-de-camp to General Grant. Later he became superintendent of the geodetic survey of the great lakes and of the improvements at the mouth of the Mississippi, and published works on these and other engineering topics. He was elected to the National Academy in 1884, and in 1907 gave the academy a fund of $10,000 for the promotion of researches in electricity magnetism and radian energy.
Charles Abiathar White, born in 1826, though early interested in science, was late in beginning professorial work. He received a degree in medicine at the age of thirty-seven and three years later became state geologist of Iowa and professor of natural history in the state university. He accepted a chair in Bowdoin College in 1873 and two years later became geologist in the surveys of Powell and Hayden. For many years he was connected with the Geological Survey, the National Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. He was elected to the National Academy in 1889. He published over two hundred contributions to geology, zoology and botany, maintaining his scientific activity to the end, as is indicated by an article in a recent volume of this journal.
Mr. Agassiz and Professor Barker died at the age of seventy-five, General Constock at the age of seventy-nine, Dr. White at the age of eighty-five. Another American scientific man who played an important part during the second half of the last century and died with his life work fully accomplished was Professor William Phipps Blake. He was born in 1826 and made valuable studies in the mineral deposits and geological structure of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast regions. Dr. Amos Emerson Dolbear, for thirty-six years professor of physics at Tufts College, known for inventions and other work in physical science, has died at the age of seventy-three years. Professor Robert Parr Whitfield, of the American Museum of Natural History, eminent as a geologist, has died at the age of eighty-two years. Dr. Cyrus Thomas, archeologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology since 1882, well known for his contributions to anthropology, has died at the age of eighty-five years.
More grievous than the death of veteran men of science is the loss of those whose work is not accomplished. Charles Reid Barnes, professor of plant pathology in the University of Chicago, dying after a fall at the age of fifty-two, was among our leaders in botany in both performance and promise. Dr. H. T. Ricketts, also of the University of Chicago, but called to the University of Pennsylvania, died in Mexico City at the age of thirty-nine years from typhus fever contracted as a result of research work on that disease. Even this partial list shows how severe have been the losses by death from among American men of science during the past six months.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
The Paris Academy of Sciences has conferred the Janssen Prize, consisting of a gold medal, on Director W. W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory.—• Professor Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University, has been invited by the Chemical Society (London) to deliver the next Faraday lecture. This will be the tenth Faraday lecture, the others having been given as follows: Dumas, 1869; Cannizzaro, 1872; Hofmann, 1875; Wurtz, 1879; Helmholtz, 1881; Mendeléef, 1889; Rayleigh, 1895; Ostwald, 1904; Emil Fischer, 1907.—Dr. John Benjamin Murphy, professor of surgery in Northwestern University, has been elected president of the American Medical Association, for the meeting to be held next year at Los Angeles.
