50 YEARS AGO

“Origin and Age of Meteorites.” In his recent article under this title, Prof. H. C. Urey says: “While the excellent studies of Paneth and his co-workers are most interesting because of the facts which they present about the formation of meteorites and the effects of cosmic rays, I believe that it is very difficult to decide what event or events were recorded by the helium, uranium and thorium abundances.”

We should like to put on record that we agree with Prof. Urey that there are difficulties in the interpretation of our results; but that we do not think that his statements prove that our arguments, leading to an age of no more than a few hundred million years, are incorrect. We are not convinced that his interesting thermodynamic reasoning can be applied to the calculation of the maximum quantities of uranium and thorium in iron meteorites, since it is by no means certain that their distribution was achieved under equilibrium conditions.

F. A. Paneth et al.

From Nature 4 June 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

The thirty-fifth of the privately printed opuscula... of the Sette of Odd Volumes is entitled “The Early History of the Royal Society.” The author of this brochure is Mr. Henry B. Wheatley... who has succeeded in writing a very interesting account of the early years of our national association of men of science. Mr. Wheatley shows that Charles II — “Founder, Patron, and one of the Royal Society of London for improving Natural Knowledge” — took a genuine interest in the advancement of the society. “True he did not give any money, but then money was never very plentiful with His Majesty.”... Objections were on one occasion made to Charles II that a member recommended by him for election was a shopkeeper. By way of reply the King “gave this particular charge to his Society, that if they found any more such tradesmen they would be sure to admit them all, without any more ado.”

From Nature 1 June 1905.