Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/517

Rh Association is this year particularly fortunate in its retiring and in its incoming presidents. Other eminent men have presided over the Association, but perhaps not before have they united scientific eminence with such great services to the Association and the organization of science in America. Those who have heard or read the presidential addresses which Professor Woodward gave last year before the American Mathematical Society and before the New York Academy of Sciences will look forward with great interest to the Denver address, which we hope to publish in the next issue of this journal. Professor Minot, the incoming president of the Association—whose portrait is given as frontispiece—is known here and abroad for his important contributions to embryology, physiology, animal morphology and zoology. As a boy Minot collected insects, and his earliest publications were on entomological topics. Graduating at the age of twenty from the Massachusetts institute of Technology in 1872, he could at that time find in America no good opportunity to carry on advanced studies and consequently went abroad and spent three years in Germany and France. He was given the S.D. by Harvard in 1878 and appointed lecturer in the medical school in 1880, being promoted to an assistant professorship in 1887 and to the full professorship of histology and embryology in 1892. At first Minot's work was chiefly physiological—while a student under Ludwig at Leipzig he published an article showing that muscles can maintain their contraction without forming carbonic acid—and in the direction of experimental biology, his investigations covering topics such as growth, heredity and the differentiation of tissues. This work led to two important laws, namely, that, aside from minor fluctuations, the power of growth diminishes from birth onwards, there being really in animals no period of development as opposed to decline; and that the decline in the rate of growth is correlated with the increase and differentiation of the protoplasm of the cells. Another field of early study was the structure of worms. Here his most important result was the demonstration that the Nemertean worms, which had always been classed with the Plathelminths, form a distinct class. The microscopic anatomy of insects and vertebrates was the subject of a number of investigations, among them an extended essay on the histology of the locust, which contains many new observations on insect anatomy.

Owing to the claims of his professorship, strictly embryological work has steadily grown more predominant during the last twenty years. His first important embryological paper was a comparative study of the uterus and placenta, being the first comprehensive account of the microscopic anatomy of the human uterus during pregnancy, and containing many additions to knowledge. During recent years his writings—which in all number over one hundred and fifty titles—have chiefly presented the results of various embryological investigations. The book on 'Human Embryology,' first published in 1892, is a standard work here and in Europe.

As has been indicated, Professor Minot, while making these important contributions to science and conducting a department in a great medical school, has found time to take a leading part in what may be called the organization of science. He has written admirable articles and addresses of a general character, published in this and in other journals; he has by his publications and personal efforts done much to advance medical education and to unite it with biological research; he has accomplished much for bibliography, for the building and equipment of laboratories and in other directions. Following the suggestion of