Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/582

578

floor is exclusively for work in physics; the third floor contains further laboratories for the two departments and drawing rooms. The engineering faculty contains seven professors, with ten other instructors, and provides well equipped courses in civil engineering, mining engineering and chemistry.

The John Bell Scott Memorial, the physical laboratory of Wesleyan University, was dedicated on December 7, the principal address being made by Dr. Edward B. Rosa, formerly professor of physics at Wesleyan University and now physicist of the National Bureau of Standards. The building is a gift from the late Charles Scott, of Philadelphia, and his son, Charles Scott, who died from disease contracted while serving as chaplain of the U. S. Cruiser St. Paul, during the Spanish-American War. The main part of the building is 102x51 feet on the ground plan, and consists of a basement, three stories and an attic. In addition there is an extension of 50x30 feet in the rear which has basement and two stories.

the death of Albert Benjamin Prescott, America has lost one of its most honored men of science. Perhaps the chief distinction that can be conferred on an American scientific worker by his colleagues is election to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—the number of surviving past presidents is reduced to eighteen by the death of Prescott. Born in 1832, his whole life was associated with the University of Michigan, in the extraordinary development of which his own work was an important factor. He received there the doctorate of medicine in 1864 and was appointed assistant professor of chemistry in 1865. In 1870 he was promoted to a professorship of organic and applied chemistry and was in the same year made director of the School of Pharmacy.

These positions he has since retained as well as the directorship of the Chemical Laboratory, which he assumed in 1884. He served as president of the