the youngest thirty-nine. The scientific man, like others engaged in creative work, is likely to have his ideas early, but unlike the man of letters or the artist, he needs a full life to work them out. Science is long and slow, and becomes so increasingly with the accumulated heritage of knowledge.
Abbot Lawrence Rotch, dead after an operation for appendicitis at the age of fifty, was one of the few men of independent means in this country who have devoted themselves to science from love of the work. In 1906 he was given a partly honorary professorship at Harvard University, but twenty years before he had founded and had since directed the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, from which have come important explorations of the upper air by kites and balloons. Charles Robert Sanger, born in 1860, was director of the chemical laboratory of Harvard College. In spite of the onerous executive and teaching duties of the office, he found time to carry on accurate researches on the detection of minute quantities of arsenic, antimony and fluorine and on the chlorine derivatives of silicon and sulphur.
Thomas Harrison Montgomery, who died from pneumonia, barely thirtynine years old, was in charge of zoology at the University of Pennsylvania, where there had just been completed under his direction a laboratory of zoology unsurpassed in the world. His researches on cellular structure and its relation to the phenomena of heredity and the determination of sex; on the activities, habits and development of spiders and birds; on the structure and development of various rotifers and insects and on the analysis of racial descent and of evolution, have been described in more than eighty monographs. Henry Wilson Spangler, like Montgomery, in charge of an important department of the University of Pennsylvania and of a large laboratory of mechanical engineering recently erected, died at the age of fifty-four. He was at the same time a distinguished engineer and a great teacher. John Bernhardt Smith, born in 1858, was entomologist of New Jersey and of the Experiment Station as well as professor in Rutgers College. He had done important systematic work, but is best known for his economic work, especially on the suppression of the mosquito. Ralph Stockman Tarr, forty-eight years old at the time of his death, was professor of physical geography at Cornell University. He was distinguished for his work in physiography and glacial geography.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
Lord Lister bequeathed nearly the whole of his fortune to scientific institutions and hospitals, including $100,000 to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine and $50,000 to the Royal Society.—Professor A. Lawrence Rotch has by his will given the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory with an endowment of $50,000 to Harvard University.
Dr. Ira Remsen has resigned the presidency of the Johns Hopkins University. It is understood, however, that he will retain the chair of chemistry which he has held since the opening of the institution in 1876.—Dr. George T. Moore has been elected director of the Missouri Botanical Garden to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. William Trelease.
Sir J. J. Thomson has been appointed by King George V. a member of the order of merit. The other scientific men who are members of the order are Lord Rayleigh, Dr. A. R. Wallace and Sir William Crooks. The order has recently lost through death Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Lord Lister.—The second annual award of the Willard Gibbs Medal, founded by Mr. William A. Converse, will be made by the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society on May 17, to Professor Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University. It may be remembered that the initial award of this medal was made last May to Professor Svante Arrhenius.
