Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/95

Rh which can to advantage take place during convocation week. Neither can the societies singly exert the influence on the public and on public affairs which they can hope to gain by united effort. The best solution of the problem would probably be for the American Association and all our scientific societies to meet together in one of our larger cities in the winter and to arrange for a smaller and less technical meeting at one of the university towns in the summer; and, so far as possible, for the societies that wish to hold separate meetings to call them at times that will not interfere with the great convocation week meetings.

December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the great prizes established by his will were awarded for the fifth time. The award for the promotion of peace to the Austrian Baroness von Suttner for her novel, entitled 'Die Waffen nieder,' and that to the great Polish novelist, Henryk Sienckiewicz, for literary work in an idealistic direction, do not fall within the immediate scope of this journal. The prize in physiology and medicine goes to Professor Robert Koch, that in physics to Professor Philipp Lenard, and that in chemistry to Professor Adolf von Baeyer.

Each of the recipients has a worldwide reputation for scientific research and discovery. Dr. Koch has the great distinction of having discovered the bacilli of tuberculosis and of cholera. His tuberculin has failed as a remedy, but has proved of great value in diagnosis. His researches on malaria, rinderpest and various tropical diseases have been contributions of vast importance for the study and cure of disease. Dr. Koch does not hold a university position, and like Dr. Behring, to whom a Nobel prize was awarded in 1901, he earns money by his discoveries. They have been criticized for this, but it may be that the greatest advances in science will come when investigators are paid directly for their work instead of indirectly as at present. Dr. Koch was born in Clausthal in 1843; he studied at Göttingen and carried on his researches for some years as a practising physician in small towns. In 1880 he became an officer of the Imperial Bureau of Health at Berlin, and in 1885 was appointed director of the Berlin Laboratory of Hygiene and professor in the university. He has, however, been chiefly engaged in expeditions to tropical countries under the auspices of the German and other governments, and is just now returning to Berlin from South Africa.

Professor Lenard, of Kiel, is distinguished for the discovery of the rays that bear his name, which was an important step forward in the direction of research which has become dominant in recent physics, the phenomena of radiation and the theories of the constitution of matter, with which the names of Röntgen, Becquerel and the Curies, who have already received Nobel prizes, are associated, and to which Thomson, Rutherford and Crookes have contributed in equal measure. Lenard was born 1802, studied at Heidelberg and at Berlin, and has filled teaching positions in Bonn, Breslau Heidelberg and Kiel. He has accomplished much valuable work in addition to his release of the cathode rays from the Crookes tubes, but he is scarcely the peer of Lord Kelvin or Professor J. J. Thomson, neither of whom has received a Nobel prize.

Baron von Baeyer, of Munich, has made contributions of great importance to organic and industrial chemistry. His work on the carbon compounds is of much theoretical interest, but he is most widely celebrated for the discovery of aniline dyes and the artificial production of indigo. Professor von Baeyer celebrated his seventieth birthday on October 31. Born in Berlin, he studied there, and at Heidelberg and Geneva. He qualified as Dozent at Berlin in 1860 and became full professor of chemistry at the newly-organized University of Strasburg in 1872, succeeding Liebig at Munich in 1575.