POLITICIANS AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20316, 26 January 1928, Page 2

POLITICIANS AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

MR BALDWIN’S LIGHT VEIN. PREMIER’S UNCOVETED HONOUR. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 14. Sir Ernest Rutherford presided at the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, when the Prime Minister, who was recently elected a Fellow of the society, was principal guest. Mr Baldwin was amusing in suggesting the qualifications he possessed for the “uncoveted honour ” he had received. “ I do not know why ytm want a politician in your midst, he said. “We live in different worlds. You deal with suns, stars, atoms, and electrons, and I with rates and taxes.— (Laughter.) With you space and time are merely appearances, but with me they are grim realities. You are a priesthood and worship truth. I belong to a sect, and — (Laughter.) You employ a hypothesis as far as it will carry you. _ When it is unserviceable you discard it and find a new one. If we discard our hypothesis we are not said to be pushing forward the bounds of knowledge—we are called rats. (Laughter.) “You keep silence until you know the truth. That would impose a great strain on use. — (Laughter.) When you have found the truth you try to describe it in a few words. Our constituents grade us according to the number of columns of Hansard we produce, and if we keep silence we render ourselves liable to a vote of censure.— (Loud laughter.) We make perorations, and so do you, and I prefer yours to mine. I think you may have been moved to elect me a member of your society, because you know I am, at any rate, one of those politicians who have a profound disgust for rhetoric, who never practices it, and who prefers to very often putting his thoughts into a lower the temperature of political life by refrigerator. DIFFERENT KINDS OF GAS.

“ There are some subjects on which perhaps I have a little knowledge! I know something of the nature and the different kinds of gas.— (Laughter.) I believe you describe the heat of a gas as chiefly the energy of motion and its particles. It is that which gives a gas its expansive force. If the neat is excessive odd. things happen. I understand the true balance depends not only on the question of temperature, but also on the number of particles, which I believe you call density. Temperature and density are things I am brought up against every day of my life.— (Loud laughter.) If, at any time, I can render your society any service in that direction I will put my knowledge at your disposal. “You are better prophets than we are; you prophesy about the comets, the tides, and eclipses. There are prophets among us to-day who foretell the result of the next general election, a bolder prophecy than any you indulge in. They also prophesy the direction of the flowing tide, but I have never yet met a politician who will express in public the prophecy of his own eclipse. They know it sometimes, but they have not that passionate desire to give expression to the truth which smu have.”—(Loud laughter.) CONWAY EVANS PRIZE. Sir Ernest Rutherford, proposing the toast “ The Medallists,” announced that the society had awarded to Sir Charles Sherrington the Conway Evans prize, amounting to 500gns, for his work in regard to the physiology of the nervous system. Ilis work on the physiology of the brain and spinal cord of the higher animals brought many complex nervous functions for the first time within the range of investigation and analysis. The award was determined by the president of the Royal Soicety and the president of the Royal College of Physicians in London under the terms of a bequest by Dr Conway Evans, who died in 1892, as a reward to persons who rendered some valuable contribution or addition to science by invention, discovery, or otherwise.