Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/481

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
477

fairs. During the siege of Paris he was president of the committee on defense, in 1876 he was appointed inspector general of higher education and in 1881 he was made a life senator. He was for a time minister of public instruction and later minister of foreign affairs. He was for many years permanent secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences and was a member of the French Academy.

Returning from a meeting of the academy, Berthelot survived the shock of his wife's death by only a few minutes. The public funeral voted by the parliament before its adjournment as a mark of respect, the ceremonies of the national funeral at the Panthéon and the closing of all schools in France demonstrate in how high honor the French people hold their eminent men of science.

Henri Moissan was born in 1852, and his first work, published in 1874, was concerned with the absorption of oxygen and the emission of carbonic acid by plants kept in a darkened room. In 1880 he received the doctorate of science for work on the oxides of the metals of the iron group. He became eminent for his work on the isolation of fluorine, which he communicated to the Paris Academy in 1886, and which was followed by important researches on the chemical and physical properties of fluorine and its compounds. Subsequently Moissan took up the subject of high temperature researches, and became popularly known for the artificial production of diamonds. In his work with the electric furnace, Moissan investigated in detail a number of individual chemical reactions, including the formation of calcium carbide, which have been of great importance for the progress of inorganic chemistry. Moissan was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1891, and, after teaching in the École supérieure de Pharmacie, became professor of inorganic chemistry at the Sorbonne in 1900.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

The portrait group of Drs. Halstead, Kelly, Osier and Welch of the medical department of the Johns Hopkins University, painted by Mr. John S. Sargent, and here reproduced, has now been brought to the country and formally presented to the university by Miss Garrett. The painting is highly esteemed as a work of art, the critic of the London Times holding that it will do more to perpetuate the names of the subjects than their scientific achievements. However this may be, the work of these men and their associates, whether recognized or not, is and will remain an important part of the foundation of higher education in the United States.

When the Johns Hopkins University was opened in 1876, it set new standards of university work. For the first time in this country graduate work, research and publication were given their proper place. The men who taught and advanced knowledge and the men who advanced knowledge as they learned were the university rather than the buildings and equipment. The establishment of the medical department in 1893 did for medical education and for professional education what the university had done earlier for graduate work. Here for the first time to the fullest degree were united broad culture, expert training and research work. In some ways the achievement of the medical department has been even more notable than the earlier performance of the graduate department. In 1876 the time was ripe for a university, and a considerable endowment was available at Baltimore free from conditions. In 1893 a broadening of the medical curriculum was evidently needed, but the Johns Hopkins had less means than the other institutions. It accomplished what it did by bringing together a group of men notable for