Evening star., 1935-04-25

probably will discourage anyone from
trying to repeat the work, although
DR.. Heyl himself. with true scieI tif1c
love of absolute accuracy. Is not en-
tirely satisfied. He believes that there
is a slight error because of friction in
the set-up of his pendulum and that
his value Is a trif1e low-less than ~
part in a million. The final absolute
value Of gravity which may be OBJ
tained by somebody a century hence,
he believes, will be somewhere be-
tween his value and the Potsdam
value.
The German physicists who eStab-
lished the value which has stood for
30 years worked in ignorance of the
new materials and mechanisms which
since have become available. but such
was their meticulousness that they
came very close to the value estab-
lished here by much more accurate
methods. DR.. Heyl believes. how
ever, that they played in luck. The
statistical treatment of their numer-
GUS measurements happened to work
out better than they had any right
to expect. The difference between
their greatest and least values is
three times that between the great
est and least obtained by the Wash
ington physicist.
Ions in Air Described.
Results of studies at the terrestrial
magnetism laboratory of the Car
negie Institution of Washington we're
described at the opening sessions of
the American Physical Society today
by DR.. A. G. McNish and DR.. G. r.
Wait. They dealt with the existence
in the atmosphere Of some ions"
or molecules from which some of the
constituent parts have been stripped
away by radiation.
At Washington, they said, there Is
a regular daily variation in the pro-
duction rate Of these particles. with
maximum around sunrise and q
minimum about sunset. The varia-
ton is the inverse of the daily tenn
perature curve and is interpreted as
due to the diminution of the radium-
emination content Of the lower at
mosphere through scattering by con-
vection currents.
Fourteen American scientists yes
terday were elected to the National
Academy.
Prominent among them was Prot.
Harold c. Urey of Columbia Univer-
Sity, Nobel prize winner, and one OF
the discoverers of the famous heavy
water" counted as one of the most
important scientific advances "a many
years.
Besides DR.. Urey the academy at
its annual meeting elected the fol-
lowing:
Norman Levi Bowen. geologist, Car
negie Institution of Washington;
Charles Manning Child. zoologist, Uni
versity of Chicago; George Elicit Cog
hill, anatomist, Wistar Institute,
Philadelphia: James Ewing, patholo-
gist, Memorial Hospital, New York
City.
Merritt Lyndon Fernald. botsnist,
Gray Herbarium, Cambridge. Mass;
Harvey Fletcher. physicist. Bell Te,e-
phone laboratories, New York; Ross
Aiken Gortner, chemist, University Of
Minnesota; Earnest Albert Hooton.
anthropologist, Harvard University;
Jerome Clark HunSaker, aerodyaam-
les expert, Massachusetts, Institute Of
Technology.
Walter Samuel Hunter, psyCholo-
gist. Clark University, Worcester.
Mass; Dunham jackson, mathemati-
clan, University of Minnesota: Ches-
ter Ray Longwell. geologist. Yale Uni
versity; John Hasbrouck Van Week,
physicist. Harvard University.
Two new foreign associates of the
academy were elected, John Scott
Haldane Of oxford University, Eng
land, and Jules Bordet, Pasteur Insti-
tute, Brussels, Belgium.
Oficers of the academy elected
we're: President, Frank r. Lille, BIZ
ologist of the University Of Chicago;
home secretary, Fred E. Wright. Car
negie Institution Of Washington, s'lc-
ceeding himself for another four
years; members Of the council for
three years, Henry Norris Russell,
Princeton University, and Ross G.
Harrison, Yale, both reelected.