Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/558

554 In accepting the office of President of the Ninth International Congress of Applied Chemistry, Professor Walden made the following remarks:

As the leader, director and presiding officer of the Ninth Congress of Applied Chemistry, Professor Walden possesses many notable qualities which must aid in rendering that congress a success. With its complex composition, made up as it is of as many, or perhaps more countries than there are known chemical elements, we might say that no one was better qualified than Professor Walden, with his intimate knowledge of the art of combining and ordering the various chemical elements, and we have no doubt that he will be equally successful with the various and eminently individual human equations in the congress, and that they will be so welded as to constitute a thoroughly homogeneous assembly, which will be brought to a close in a manner satisfactory to all, after the members shall have given free and full expression to their views.

The eighth congress had to decide whether four or but three official languages should be recognized, and the action finally taken favored the recognition of four—English, French, German and Italian. At the ninth congress many interesting matters will have to be discussed and determined; one of the most important contemplates the securing of an agreement among scientists to accept a standard determination of atomic weights by successive congresses, the weights recognized as