Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/207

Rh

meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the national scientific societies affiliated with it held at Boston during the week following Christmas was as large and important as any gathering of scientific men that has hitherto taken place in this country. The registration of members of the association was 1,140 as compared with 975 in Washington in 1902, 890 in Philadelphia in 1904, 934 in New York in 1900, 725 in Chicago in 1907 and 1,088 in Baltimore in 1908. From this voluntary registration it is difficult to estimate the attendance of scientific men. 200 chemists registered as members of the association and 558 as members of the American Chemical Society. Should a similar proportion have obtained in the other sciences, the number of scientific men would have been in the neighborhood of 3,000. It was probably not so great as this, but well above 2,000.

Although Boston is at the northeast corner of the field of scientific activity of the United States, it is still central, through the magnitude of its educational and scientific work and on account of its easy accessibility from other centers. Harvard remains our leading university and the Massachusetts Institute our leading school of technology, although the gap between them and other institutions is closing, and their supremacy may not be unchallenged when the association next