SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
In addition to Wolcott Gibbs and Otis T. Mason, the country has lost in the death of William Keith Brooks one of its most eminent men of science. A biographical sketch of Professor Brooks, who had been professor of zoology at the Johns Hopkins University since 1876, together with a portrait, will be found in the issue of The Popular Science Monthly for July, 1899. We regret also to record the death of Dr. Andrew J. McCosh, a leading surgeon of New York City; of M. Alfred Ditte, the French chemist, and of W. E. Ayrton, the British physicist and electrician.
Dr. Richard C. MacLaurin, for the past year professor of mathematical physics in Columbia University and previously professor of mathematics in the University of New Zealand, has been elected president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.—Professor W. W. Campbell, director of the Lick Observatory, has been appointed lecturer for next year on the Silliman foundation at Yale University.
Nobel prizes in the sciences for 1908 have been awarded as follows: For chemistry. Professor Ernest Rutherford, director of the physical laboratories of the University of Manchester, England; for physics, M. Gabriel Lippmann, professor of physics in the University of Paris; for medicine, divided between Dr. Paul Ehrlich, of Berlin, and Professor Elie Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute of Paris.
The Royal Society has awarded medals as follows: the Copley medal to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in recognition of the great value of his numerous contributions to natural history, and of the part he took in working out the theory of the origin of species by natural selection; the Rumford medal to Professor H. A. Lorentz, for his investigations in optical and electrical science; a Royal medal to Professor John Milne, for his preeminent services in the modern development of seismological science; a Royal medal to Dr. Henry Head, for his researches on the relations between the visceral and somatic nerves and on the functions of the afferent nerves; the Davy medal to Professor W. A. Tilden, for his discoveries in chemistry, especially on the terpenes and on atomic heats; the Darwin medal to Professor August Weismann, for his eminent services in support of the doctrine of evolution by means of natural selection; the Hughes medal to Professor Eugene Goldstein, for his discoveries on the nature of electric discharge in rarefied gases.
