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THE COLLEGE NEWS

Page Five

 

 

Women Scientists Owe

Bryn Mawr Great Debt

 

(Excerpts from speech of Dr. Flor-
ence Rena Sabin.) =

President Park:

I cannot express adequately to you
and to your committee the pleasure I
fel; in, yecejving this prize, for there
is disti_ictionte-an. honor-which bears

- the name of M. Carey Thomas.

I confess at once that any award

. for work \in science must awake a cer-

tain sense of timidity; for one can
never be gure that research will stand,
How oftén have the’ supposed facts
and thepries of: the very ablest been
reversed by new evidence?

But why does an honor from Bryn
Mawr touch so deep a sense of grati-
tude? ‘It is because of the. traditions
of this place and all that they have

meant for schalarship and for women. |:

I remember so vividly getting the feel

of this on the occasion, now thirteen |*

years ago, when Miss Thomas retired
from the presidency of the college.
There was not a single person who
spoke at that time, former members
of the faculty and former students

alike, who did not bring out that the;

influence of Miss Thomas’ had been in
a quite unique manner fostering
toward high standards of work. What
gratification it must be to her, Presi-
dent Park, that you have the same
feeling for scholarship and that you
have carried on and extended the high
traditions of Bryn Mawr.

It seems to me fitting that I should
speak of certain points concerning the
influence of Miss Thomas on educa-
tion in science. As it well known,
the greatest function of the president
of any institution of learning is the
choosing of a faculty. Moreover, real
ability for this function consists in
having the insight to select scholars
while they ‘are still young, before they
have demonstrated their full power.
To use only one example, but that one
striking enough, the early faculty of
Bryn Mawr College ‘included three
young men who became our most dis-
tinguished biologists. Edmund B.
Wilson, Thomas Hunt Morgan and
Jacques Loeb have given American
biology world pre-eminence.

I, want next to dwell on the influ-
ence which Miss Thomas exerted on
medical education. The opening of
the Johns Hopkins Medical School in
1892 was made possible by a fund
raised by a group of women led by
Miss Thomas and Miss Mary E. Gar-
rett, of Baltimore. The money for
this fund was in the main contributed
by Miss Garrett, but far more impor-
tant than the actual gift of money,
which determined the time of opening
of the new medical school, were the
conditions under which the fund was
given and accepted. I*think that Miss
Garrett would be especially pleased
to have us here recognize the role
which Miss Thomas played in this
event. She laid down the conditions
Which were to be met, namely, a col-
lege degree or its equivalent, a knowl-
edge of physics, chemistry and biology,
proficiency in foreign languages, and
the admission of women on the same
terms as men. The adoption of these
requirements for admission to the
medical school in Baltimore lifted the
standards of the whole medical pro-
fession in this country and made medi-
cine a graduate subject.

May I now say a word about women
in science? Since we are still told
that women are an inferior group in
the affairs of the mind, I propose to
ask the question, What new data on
this subject have the past fifty years
brought forth? It is important to
discuss this matter dispassionately
and quite without emotion—as I, for
one, perhaps could not have done forty
years ago. Forty years of study in
science have convinced me that the
book of human progress has not been
closed and the possibilities of develop-
ment are not yet defined. We admit
at once that no great volume of sci-
entific work has yet been done by
women. But is there any work by
women, judged rigidly “by the same
standards as for men,” which is of
such high quality that it marks a
milestone in scientific progress?

In answer to this question, I wish
to speak of the work of three women,
all of them European, whose work in
science has this common characieris-
tic, that it has opened up whole new
fields of knowledge. oe

I shall not linger to prove the point
about Madame Curie, for her share
in opening up the subjeet of radio-
activity and its significance in reveal-
ing. the structure of matter are too

 

 

ee

Dr. Sabin, Dr. Park and Dr. Flexner entering Goodhart

 

Me

 

Photo Courtesy of Evening Bulletin

 

well established to need emphasis.
-My second name is less well known.
As little more than fifty years ago
there was a young girl of nineteen in
a small town of north Germany, with
a strong bent for research; but when
her brother went to the University of
Goettingen she, according to the -cus-
toms of her country, remained at
home. Agnes Pockels had observed
the streaming of currents when salts
were put into: solution and, by attach-
ing a float to a balance, had found
that salts increased the pull of the

surface of the fluid. In other words,

she had discovered surface tension.
This was in 1881. For ten years she
went on studying the properties of
solutions quite alone in her own home.
Then the renowned English physicist,
Lord Rayleigh, began to publish on
this subject, and so she wrote to him
about her work. He sent a transla-
tion of her letter to the’ English jour-
nal Nature, asking that it be pub-
lished. He wrote that the first part
of the letter covered nearly the same
ground as his own recent work and

‘that with ® very “homely appliances”

she had arrived at valuable results
respecting the behavior of contaminat-
ed water surfaces.

Here in Bryn Mawr College you will
know the third example before she is
mentioned. Emmy Noether is admit-
ted by her peers into that small group
of the world’s greatest mathema-
ticians. She was one of that brilliant
group of mathematicians at Goettin-
gen whom fate has scattered into
many lands. Her field was algebra.

And now, President Park, Einstein
has said that the last eighteen months
of Emmy Noether’s life, spent as they
were on your faculty, were the hap-
piest and most fruitful of her career.
Surely these words are your enduring
reward. And it is clear enough that
your influence has not been limited
to the walls of Bryn Mawr College.
All women everywhere who care for
the things of the mind. are in your
debt. I feel especially happy that this
occasion gives me the chance to be
spokesman of our gratitude. Our debt
is not. only because throughout your
administration you have ‘held up the
high traditions of this college, but far
more because during a period of. his-
tory when powerful forces seek to
sensitize the mind of the whole world
to prejudice, you have shown that you
place intellect first.

 

Colleges, Universities
Are Home of Science

 

(These excerpts from the speech of
Dr. Simon Flexner, retired head of the
Rockefeller Institute, are made with

the codperation of the Alumnae Bul-|

letin.)

I like to think of today’s award in
the light of the chosen professidn of
the founder of the college, Doctor
Taylor, and its first president, Doctor
Rhoads, and reflect on the delight and
satisfaction they would have found
in it, and how their faith in the higher
education of women woyld have been

strengthened and uplifted.

... The place of the biochemist in
the newer medicine cannot be over-
rated. His work has passed from the
study of the dead constituents of
organs and tissues to the far more
difficult and subtle investigation of the
chemical changes which occur, in the
living cell in both the normal and. the

tet
» . 1

 

pathological state> .And_ the
which the younger sister science of
biophysics is playing is only less sig-
nificant and fundamental than that of
biochemistry. In both cases, the ap-
plication of new methods and the in-
vention and employment of more exact
and sensitive apparatus, have had a
determining share in the progress
made. It is a far cry from the chance
discovery by Galvani in 1786 of the
action of electric currents on muscles,
to the perfection by Einthoven of the
string galvanometer or electrocardio-
graph in 1903, later much improved,
which registers in a language of tele-
graphic symbols that the instructed
can read and interpret, the motions of
the several chambers of the heart; and
the invention of delicate thermopiles
and the application of the vacuum
tube to the measurement of the chem-
ical heat production and the excited
electric impulses of nerves in action.

These things are now becoming the
daily practices of the biological, chem-
ical and physical laboratories, not of
medical schools only, but of colleges
and universities. The applications
being made and to be made are too
numerous to mention, and new ones
are arising almost daily. How neces-
sary, therefore, that a college with
the advanced standards of Bryn Mawr
should offer its students laboratory
facilities where this new, indispen-
sable, fruitful knowledge can _ be
taught and extended. I am, there-

fore, more deeply gratified than I can}.

well express that a major purpose to
which funds now being secured by the
alumni are to be applied in the erec-
tion of a new laboratory to supplement
Dalton Hall, built forty years ago,
and for its time a model laboratory,
now necessarily inadequate and out of
date.

The natural home of science is the
college and university. It is there
that the student is exposed at an early
age to the fascinations of its pursuit,
and it is there also that those price-
less years from seventeen to twenty-
one can be employed in the acquisition
of technical skill as well as scientific
knowledge. To the facilities of the
college and university there have been
added those of other institutions in
which science is cultivated. The re-
search institute will, however, not take
the place of the college; it will sup-
plement and extend the opportunity
for selected scientists, and provide
limited postgraduate study for young-

 

 

INCREASE SEEN IN
LAUNDRY SHIPPING

The practice of sending laundry
home seems to be becoming a pop-
ular fad throughout the country,
according to a Railway Express
report, which organization sur-
veyed over one hundred colleges
recently, located in every State in
the Union.

Realizing that many young men
and women students have a definite
interest in, “home-laundered”
thihgs, Railway Express, quick to
anticipate public requirements, de-
‘veloped the business on a wide-
spread scale. The prompt pick-up
and delivery service provi for
the laundry, both outbound and
inbound, together with the ex-
tremely reasonable rates, have been
responsible for the popularity of
the idea. Laundry is now second

. only in importance to the baggage
business which Railway Express
handles from colleges and schools,
said the local agent. See page 6.

x

 

 

 

part;er men and women. We may liken the

 

purposes of the research institutes of
the day to those of the learned acad-
emies which arose in the seventeenth
century. Eoth came at a time when
scientific knowledge was expand'ng
rapidly, when many technical devices
were being invented and _ perfected,
and when the speed of discovery out-
ran the ability of the colleges to keep
pace with the new dovclopments, and
the need for more intimate associa-
tion among investigators and volun-
tary codperation came to be felt. The
learned academies have continued to
function, although in a manner differ-
ent from that to which they owe their
origin. The research institutions will
also, I believe, continue to flourish,
drawing on the colleges and universi-
ties for staff, and repaying them in
the special opportunities afforded.
But the main research will continue in
the far-flung colleges, at least so long
as the curricula make room for it,
since the combination of teacher and
investigator is a highly favorable one
to the development of individual tal-
ent. .. . Happy is the college which
accounts among its faculty teachers
possessing stimulating personalities;

 

and thrice happy the teacher who may .
point to pupils whose accomplishments
exzel his own! >

And now, Doctor Sabin, I desire to
salute you in the name of your asso- ©
ciates at the Rockefeller Institute,
and your confréres everywhere. Your
fruitful years of teaching and re+
search, in which you united a love of’
work and a love, of. your pupils, have
won you an abiding place in the hearts

of your cont oraries and have made
you ttle Rae | ae haces ee P

Carey Thomas prize. I wish also to

congratulate the college on the pos-

session of this prize to bestow on an
American woman .in any profession
or art which she has enriched. May
it. always. remain.a mark of high dis-
tinction.

 

Miss Comstock Praises
Scholarship Standards

 

(Excerpts from the address made
by Ada Louise Comstock, President of
Radcliffe College.)

To speak on this occasion for the
colleges for women is a more than
sufficient responsibility. Yet inade-
quately though the word will be
spoken, I should like to think that it
represented not only the colleges for
women but that far greater number
of institutions of higher learning
which we call coeducational. Only so
may the influence of Bryn Mawr upon
the higher education of women be es-
timated. Among those who shall call
her blessed today are many women
who never set foot in a college for
women, but whose nurture has been»
enriched and whose opportunities have
been wider because of the claims Bryn
Mawr has made and the prejudices
she has dispelled. For all college: and
university women this is a festival
day.

If this great army of women might
be conceived of as converging upon
Bryn Mawr today, laden with garlands
and chanting praises, there would be,
I venture to say, an image of a per-
son as well as of an institution in
their eyes—the image of the woman
who for twenty-eight years served as
its president. Many tributes . have
been paid Miss Thomas, and I doubt
whether they have made much im-
pression upon her; but I should think

Continued on Page Seven

 

We know you want to find out
) all about:

“The Hey Nonny, Nonny
Age at Bryn Mawr”
“Goddess of Wisdom, Thy
Torch Divine”
~Dramatics at Bryn Mawr
The Progress of Fashions

 

You can discover all these things
and much more of great interest
in this 48-page magazine, beau-

 

FIFTY YEARS OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

' tifully bound and fully illus-

trated. Here is something you
will want to keep forever!

|
The price is $.75 on the campus
and $1.00 through the mail.
Every cent goes to the Million
Dollar Minimum Fund. See any
member of the College News
board or write

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17 Pembroke East

 

 

 

 

 

 

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