LECTURER FROM GERMANY

The University has invited Professor Wilhelm Ostwald of the University of Leipzig to serve as lecturer in the first half of the coming academic year, under the arrangement for an exchange of professors which has recently been agreed upon by Harvard University and the German Government.

Professor Ostwald is regarded as one of the founders of the modern science of physical chemistry; and he has achieved a position of the highest rank in the scientific world, not only as an investigator and thinker but also as a reformer, organizer, and teacher in the field of natural science. With J. H. van't Hoff, who received the degree of LL.D., from Harvard in 1901, Ostwald founded in 1887 the Zeitschrift fur physikalische chemie, and in 1901, the Annalen der Naturphilosophie. In 1904 he gave the Faraday Lecture before the Royal Society. he has been a prolific and indefatigable investigator and writer, and a a list of his publications would occupy several closely printed pages. Although he achieved eminence first in the field of physical chemistry, Professor Ostwald has during the last four or five years diverted, or perhaps extended, his studies to the broad field of the philosophy of science, a subject to which one of his best-known works, as well as the Annalen above mentioned is devoted.

He has not yet definitely announced the subjects of the courses which he will give during his residence at Harvard. It is hoped, however, that he will give one course counting for a degree on the philosophy of science, a course which would be of interest to students in all branches of science as well as to students of philosophy. It is also hoped that he will announce one or two courses thus in his special field of physical chemistry, thus affording a rare opportunity to graduate students in chemistry who may be in residence next year.

Professor Ostwald was one of the delegates to the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis last year and was one of the scientists who visited Cambridge in October.