Revelle Elected New AAAS President; Scientists Condemn Bombing Attacks

Roger Revelle, Saltonstall Professor of Population Policy and director of the Harvard center for Population Studies was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at the society's meeting last week.

Revelle is the first AAAS president to be elected by popular ballot following a recent constitutional change ending election by the society's executive council.

He will serve a three year term supervising AAAS activities which include an annual convention for 7000-8000 thousand scientists and publication of the magazine Science.

Revelle expects to expand programs of international scientific exchange already begun by the society, a task for which Harvard colleagues George Wald. Higgins Professor of Biology, and Everett 1 Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, see him as especial well qualified.

Prior to coming to Harvard in 1964 Revelle served as science advisor to the Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1964, and earlier directed the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California from 1951 to 1964.

Although the society's main goal is to provide a forum for American scientific thought, members of last week's Washington convention decided to break with precedent and passed a political resolution condemning the recent United States bombing of North Vietnam.

Earlier in the week some of the scientists, including Mendelsohn, went to the White House and attempted to speak with a member of the national security office in order to find out what the rationale for the bombing was. Unable to see any staff members, the scientists turned in a petition condemning the bombing written by Wald and signed by several hundred AAAS members to the White House mail room.

The society also voted to support a bill sponsored by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D.-Wise.) that would direct the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a further study of the ecological effects of bombing and defoliation on Indochina