50 Years Ago

An almost unexplored record of the Earth's history is preserved in the sediment under the great oceans. Profiles of the uppermost layers have been obtained by many different types of corer, and to this list Prof. B. Kullenberg has now added a modified version of his elegant piston corer which should reach deeper than ever before... The new corer carries the same weight as the old model, 1,500 kgm., but has greater penetrating power, because with a length of only 2.3 metres there is a relatively small area of wall in frictional contact with the sediment... The corer sinks down through the sediment to a depth determined by the length of cable wrapped around its upper end. When all this cable has been unwound, the piston, which up to now has been locked at the lower end of the corer, is released and a core is taken. Although this ingenious corer has reached down to 29 m., and is expected to reach 50 m. in soft sediment... there still remains the ultimate problem of how to reach and take a continuous profile of sediment which can be a full kilometre thick.

From Nature 12 January 1957.

100 Years Ago

The issue of Science for November 23 contains an article by Prof. McKeen Cattell on the selection, and arrangement in order of merit, of a thousand American men of science... Prof. Cattell also investigates the geographical distribution of American men of science according to place of birth... The production or “birth rate” of men of science per million of the population ranges from about 109 in Massachusetts—which stands far above the other States—and eighty-seven in Connecticut down to rates of only one or two in several of the southern States. It is argued that differences in stock can scarcely be great enough to account for this, and that accordingly the production of scientific men must be largely a matter of circumstance.

From Nature 10 January 1907.