Science: A. A. A. S.

A scientist's holiday is to come out of his classroom or laboratory and discuss his specialty before a meeting of his peers. Groups of scientists met last week all through the land to discuss another year's developments in all manner of sciences. Astronomers pondered huge things at New Haven. Bacteriologists gossiped about small things in Cambridge. Geologists at Toronto heard greetings from President Hoover, himself a charter member of the Geological Society of America. Rheologists told at Easton, Pa. what news they knew of flowing liquids. Psychologists chatted in Iowa City of habits, instincts. In Manhattan psychiatrists discussed the Unconscious, and the unhappy home life of humans.

The most complete, comprehensive summing up was accomplished at Cleveland where 5,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science gathered for their 87th annual convention. Two thousand scientists read papers ranging in subject from the size & shape of the universe to the sex expression of cucumbers. They adopted a resolution protesting against the bill before Congress to prohibit the use of dogs for vivisection in the District of Columbia. For the first time, a well organized exhibition of research projects was included in the meeting so that scientists could see what they heard. Many were disappointed because their retiring president, Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, chairman of California Institute of Technology, did not bring his friend Herr Doktor Albert Einstein, now in California, to tell them about Relativity. Incoming president for 1930-31 is Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, director of biological laboratories at Caltech.

Some important scientific facts, theories, suggestions of 1930:

Big Ten. Short, diplomatic Dr. Millikan, 1929-30 president of the Association, rocked back and forth on his toes, reasserted his belief that cosmic radiations replenish earth's energy loss, referred to his scientific opponent Sir James Hopwood: Jeans, British astronomer who believes the world is dying. "If Sir James Jeans prefers to hold one view and I another no one can say us nay. The one thing of which you may be quite sure is that neither of us knows anything about it." Dr. Millikan reviewed 100 years of scientific thought and labor, named what he esteemed as ten most important contributions :

1) Formulation of the principle of conservation of energy — the first law of thermodynamics.

2) Formulation of the principle of degradation of energy — second law of thermodynamics.

3) Discovery of the facts of evolution.

4) Discovery of radioactive substances.

5) Discovery of the age of the earth, sun, stars.

6) Development of evidence of the interconvertibility of mass and energy.

7) Discovery that all elements are built up from hydrogen.

8) Evidence of the annihilation of negative & positive electrons in the interior of heavy atoms.

9) Precise measurements on the relative masses of atoms.

10) Discovery of cosmic ("Millikan") rays.