PROFESSOR BIRKHOFF IS AWARDED SCIENCE PRIZE

Professor George David Birkhoff '05, a member of the mathematics department at Harvard since 1912, was awarded the prize for "a notable contribution to the advancement of science", presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held recently in Philadelphia.

Professor Birkhoff won the honor for his Vice-Presidential address before the mathematics section of the Association, entitled "A Mathematical Critique of Some Physical Theories." With the announcement of the award, Professor Birkhoff sent a telegraphic explanation of his paper from Cambridge. Reviewing various physical theories, it pointed out some of the logical defects inherent in them. It stated:

"For example, if two elastic bodies collide at sufficiently high velocities, the laws of elasticity fail completely and the resulting motion is indeterminate. Recent researches enable us to state that such bodies may oscillate in a stable way near to a periodic state."

He particularly emphasized the importance of building mathematically complete theories of atomic structure and of determinating the resulting frequencies. So far as he knew, this had not been done for a single case hitherto. It seems to be wise not to abandon the attempt to explain laws in this way on the basis of an underlying continum of space and time, despite the fact that the quantum theory has been tending in the opposite direction.