54 NATURE July I 0, 1948 Vol. 162 certain of the examples given by me this aspect is academies, Scandinavian, British and American prominent and that it even initiated some of them. guests were present. Great Britain was represented But it is not the essential requirement, which is, of by Prof. E. D. Adrian, foreign secretary of the Royal course, the circumventing of the land ownership Society. A dinner presided over by Dr. Ekeberg, laws : without some such device, an agrarian president of the Nobel Foundation, concluded the revolution, expropriation and the rest, are sooner ceremony. or later inevitable. There is no reason why the In his speech, Prof. Bergstrand, president of the proposal should not apply to subsistence crop pro• Caroline Institute, emphasized that the Caroline duction ; the general financial level would be lower Institute needed full-time research laboratories and the operations of the corporation more modest, engaged in work along the front lines of modern approximating to what would be done by a co• science, for its own sake as well as to enable it to operative buying and selling society, composed of fulfil the important task entrusted to it by the will the tenants themselves. Organisations of this type of Alfred Nobel. The beautiful and well-equipped were working well among the Bulgarian peasant new laboratories, he went on to say, expressed the proprietors before the War, and their success was confidence of the Caroline Institute in the three not dependent on the fact that the peasant owned directors appointed to lead them. Financially, the his farm. three laboratories were a joint effort : the buildings At the same time it is clear that lack of capital in and part of the equipment came from the Nobel the Middle East is an obstacle to rapid development, Fund, which also supported one of the chairs and for it also causes peasant indebtedness to the land• part of its running expenses; the Government of lord-moneylender class. Dr. Warriner examines two Sweden supported the other two chairs and con• sources of supply : the war-time sterling credit tributed to their annual budget; the Wallenberg balances and oil royalties. Both are wasting assets, and Rockefeller Foundations contributed generously and both are likely in the present conditions to to most items of the budget. Prof. Bergstrand con• enrich the few. A speculative possibility briefly cluded his speech by expressing the gratitude of the mentioned by Dr. Warriner is to form, perhaps under Caroline Institute to the donors, and, finally, extended the United Nations, an international agency to a hearty welcome to the guests. Congratulatory promote investment and long-term economic develop• addresses were presented by Prof. E. D. Adrian, ment. This is, in fact, the public utility corporation Prof. W. D. Bronk, foreign secretary of the U.S. referred to above, on a somewhat more ambitious National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Linderstrom. scale. Lang, director of the Carlsberg Institute, Copen• The pamphlet sets a high standard for the suc• hagen, Prof. A. I. Virtanen, director of the Valio ceeding ones. It is lucidly written and the author's Research Laboratory in Biochemistry, Helsinki, and personal knowledge of the area has enabled her to Prof. Mohr, rector of the University of Oslo. set out the essentials of a very complicated situation. B. A. KEEN COLOUR TERMINOLOGY THE MEDICAL NOBEL INSTITUTES, HE Committee on Colour Terminology appointed STOCKHOLM T in 1941 by the Colour Group of the Physical Society had originally two objectives : (a) to record HE Caroline Institute in Stockholm, in all but definitions of terms current in the various groups of T name the medical university of the Swedish people concerned with colour; and (b) to examine capital, appointed a committee in 1945 for the the possibility of co-ordinating the terms commonly planning and building of new laboratories for the used. Later, in the light of the Committee's dis· three departments of the Medical Nobel Institute. cussions, a third objective was added: (c) to recom. The Department of Biochemistry was founded in mend a consistent terminology. This was a significant 1937 under the direction of Prof. Hugo Theorell; in step, as the subject of colour has very wide rami· 1940, Prof. Ragnar Granit was appointed to a fications and there was every reason to expect very research chair in neurophysiology, established with great difficulty in even approaching consistency. The the aid of a gift from the Wallenberg Foundation in report now published* shows that, provided a few Stockholm, and also supported by the Rockefeller key changes are made, the terms used by different Foundation; this became a Nobel Institute in 1945. technical groups can be embodied in a single scheme At the same time, a third department of the Nobel which avoids gross ambiguities while keeping the Institute was created, in cell research, under the specialized terms of particular interests substan· direction of Prof. Torbjorn Caspersson. tially intact. The nomenclature of colours them. During the academic year 1947-48, the three selves, as distinct from the terms used in describing departments have been moving into their new and and specifying them, was expressly excluded from spacious buildings in the 'medical city' which is the Committee's consideration. being created by the Caroline Institute in north-west In drawing up the basic list of current terms with Stockholm on an old estate known as Norrbacka. their definitions or mode of use--a list which occupies The administrative centre, the library and some of about two-thirds of the 56 pages of the report-the the laboratories have already moved out to the new Committee's net was thrown very wide. The fields site. The Departments of Physiology and Pharma• covered were colour physics (general, photometric, cology are expected to move out in the autumn. subjective and colorimetric terms), colour vision, The Medical Nobel Institute was formally opened colour-atlas systems (Munsell and Ostwald), tech· in May by the Crown Prince of Sweden and dedicated nologies involving colour (dyeing, paint and pigment, to the Nobel Foundation by Prof. Bergstrand, * Physical Society. Report on Colour Terminology. By a Commitree president of the Caroline Institute. In addition of the Colour Group. Pp. lv +56. (London: Physical Society, 1948.) to Swedish representatives from universities and 7s. net.

© 1948 Nature Publishing Group No. 4106 July I 0, 1948 NATURE 55 printing, photographic, glass and decorating in• The main changes required of different groups are dustries), the painting art and the colour terms of as follows. In colour physics, the term 'brightness' everyday speech. The definitions are fully descriptive, is to be replaced by 'luminosity' when the subjective and sufficient explanation of the underlying principles aspect is in question, and by 'luminance' when is given to make clear how certain expressions have brightness as an objective or stimulus quantity is come into use. In colour physics, once the distinction intended. The term 'shade', which at present has has been established between subjective terms several different meanings in the dyeing, paint and describing the sensations produced and the corre• pigment and printing industries, is to denote "darker sponding objective terms specifying the stimulus, the colour of same hue and saturation". The same definitions themselves present no serious difficulty. groups are asked to reserve 'tone' for "any small The case is different with technological terms. For variation from another colour". 'Duller' (paint and example, in the paint and pigment industry, the pigment industry) is not to be used to mean "con• term 'chalky' has a meaning which in the Committee's taining more black" but as "less colourful" or "less definition runs "An excess of white (in a match sup• saturated", while 'deeper' is to mean "containing posed to be close)". But, as is pointed out, in practice, less white". 'chalky' frequently implies that by the addition of In a concluding section the recommended terms wrong pigments or otherwise, a pigment mixture has are compared with those proposed in the recent been made whiter than the sample and that the Colorimetry Report of the Optical Society of America. difference is irremediable. Among the comparatively few points of disagreement The colour terms used by contemporary artists are may be noted the American retention of the term handled very gingerly by the Committe&-the proper 'brightness' for the subjective meaning of the word, course for an exclusively technical body-and for while the corresponding term recommended by the these and for the terms of ordinary speech no recom• British committe&-'luminosity'-is used in the mended usage is put forward. American report for the "ratio of the luminous flux The interrelations of the terms of different groups to radiant energy flux". The latter quantity is called are displayed in tabular form, and in the case of the 'visual sensitivity' in the British scheme. It is prob• dyeing and paint and pigment industries, the differ• able that the terms 'luminosity' and 'visual sensit• ent meanings of comparative terms such as 'stronger', ivity' will prove the most controversial in the Com• 'dirtier', 'brighter', etc., are indicated by vector lines mittee's recommended list. in colour triangles of the Ostwald type with black, Discussions on terminology often appear to non• white and a particular colour at the vertices. participants as rather unproductive. But whether As a first step to co-ordination the Committee drew or not the changes recommended in this report are up a self-consistent list of essential terms that could adopted, there can be no question that the careful be used by all colour workers without risk of con• exposition of present usage which it contains will be fusion. The final recommendations are based on this of the greatest value to workers on colour problems. self-consistent list and cover nearly a hundred terms. w. s. STILES

NEWS and VIEWS Geology at the University of Liverpool : the structure of a section of the Rift Valley elucidated. Last year he took part in the Royal Society Ex• Dr. R. M. Shackleton pedition to Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, Kenya, DR. ROBERT MILLNER SHACKLETON, who has been from which important results concerning the succes• appointed to the George Herdman chair of geology sion and structure of the Miocene beds in which at Liverpool, vacant by the resignation of Prof. F. hominoid remains occur are expected. It is to be Coles Phillips, returns to the University from which hoped that Dr. Shackleton will find time to prepare he graduated in 1930 and at which he was awarded for publication a part at least of these important the degree of Ph.D. in 1933 for researches into the results of his field-studies. complex structure of Moel Hebog, Caernarvonshire. Dr. Shackleton has been a member-and largely On leaving Liverpool, Dr. Shackleton went to the director-of a research team from the Geology Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, Department, Imperial College, that has been working with a Beit Fellowship, and joined the staff of the for a number of years on a project to compare the Geology Department of the College in 1934, becoming two sides of the North Atlantic and to test the senior lecturer in charge of petrology in 1946. continental drift theory and in particular to determine Dr. Shackleton's field-experience has been extra• the magnitude of any drift that may have occurred. ordinarily extensive and varied. He has travelled As soon as the grasp of the structure and strati• widely in South and Central Africa and in Russia graphy on the eastern side of the Atlantic is suffi• and Siberia. In 1935-36 he made a reconnaissance ciently firm, it is intended to proceed to the exam· survey of Viti Levu in the Fijis, where he discovered ination of Eastern Newfoundland and the coast of that the plutonic rocks, previously thought to be an Labrador. His new sphere at Liverpool will provide old basement, are of Tertiary age. During 1940-45, Dr. Shackleton with increased opportunities for the he served on the Geological Survey of Kenya, his continuation and completion of this attractive study. chief work dealing with economic problems connected Physiology at the Queen's University, Belfast: with the Migori gold-belt, the phosphate possibilities of North Kavirondo and the water supply of the Dr. A. D. M. Greenfield Aberdare Range and Mount Kenya areas. In 1946 he THE Queen's University of Belfast announces the returned to Kenya and made a one-man expedition appointment of Dr. A. D. M. Greenfield to the to the Rift Valley, where the sequence of the artefact• Dunville chair of physiology in succession to Prof. bearing beds of the Pleistocene was determined and H. Barcroft, now at St. Thomas's Hospital Medical

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