At a meeting of the Trustees

of Dartmouth College, held in Concord Tuesday evening, June 8, Professor Ernest Fox Nichols, D.Sc., formerly head of the department of Physics at Dartmouth, and now professor of Experimental Physics at Columbia University, was unanimously elected president of Dartmouth College, to succeed Dr. W. J. Tucker, whose resignation has been forced by failure of health.

Mr. Frank S. Streeter, chairman of the committee in charge of the nomination of a successor to President Tucker, made the following statement concerning the committee's choice:

"The committee in its nomination and the trustees in their election feel the greatest enthusiasm at the prospect of such an administration as is promised in the assurance that Professor Nichols will take upon himself the duties of the presidency of Dartmouth College. After a long and painstaking search for the man to undertake the responsibilities of the position, and a careful 'examination of the attributes of all men suggested for the office, Professor Nichols' name stood preeminent before the trustees. His breadth of training, his distinction of accomplishment, his proved capability successfully to carry through that to which he sets his hand, supplementary to his knowledge of and love for Dartmouth College, make a combination the strength of which is most unusual. His record as a scholar in his chosen field of physics, his ability as an administrator, his personal charm in social contact, and his effectiveness as a speaker, are bound to establish him quickly in the confidence of those who have not known him before.

"Dr. Nichols was born in 1869 at Leavenworth, Kansas. He received his early education in the West, and was graduated at the age of nineteen from the Kansas Agricultural College, with the degree of B.S. The next year was spent in teaching, and the following years as a graduate student in mathematics and physics at Cornell University, where he held the Erastus Brooks Fellowship. He received from Cornell the degree of Master of Science in 1893 and of Doctor of Science in 1897, both taken in course.

"In 1892 he was appointed to the chair of physics and astronomy in Colgate University. Dr. Nichols was at Colgate for six years, but two and a half of the time" were spent on leave of absence, studying under Professors Planck and Rubens of the University of Berlin. While a student in the Berlin laboratory, he made several discoveries, which were received and published by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. In collaboration with Professor H. Rubens, in the University of Berlin, he published a research entitled, 'Certain Properties of Heat Waves of Great Wavelength.' That'research not only extended over knowledge of the properties of long heat waves, but it also gave physicists new methods of attack. It was during the performance of this experiment work that Professor Nichols devised a new form of the radiometer by means.of which radiant energy could be measured with great precision. After his return to America he used this instrument at the Yerkes Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory, California, in attempts, largely successful, to measure the heat from the stars and planets.

"In 1898 Dr. Nichols was called to the professorship of physics in Dartmouth College, where his work in reorganizing the physics department, in making it one of the strongest and most efficient departments in the College, will long be remembered by Dartmouth men. During the first two years at Dartmouth he made the first measurements of the heat received from several of the brighter stars and planets, by using a radiometer of his own invention. These experiments are admittedly the most sensitive and delicate measurements of heat which have ever been made. In the new Wilder Laboratory of Dartmouth College, Professor Nichols, working with Assistant Professor Hull, in 1901, discovered the pressure of a beam of light. This discovery and the difficult and accurate measurement of the new force won immediate and worldwide recognition for both men.

"After five years at Dartmouth Dr. Nichols was called to the chair of experimental physics in Columbia University; but before he assumed his new duties, Dartmouth gave him the honorary degree of "Doctor of Science. At the time of his leaving Dartmouth the student regret was keen. One of the undergraduate publications said of him when he was gone, 'During his connection with the College, Professor Nichols was among the most ardent workers for its welfare. He did not, however, confine himself entirely to things academic, but took keen interest in all the outside activities of the students, so that it soon came to be felt that he was inspired with that something which we all like to call "true Dartmouth Spirit". * * *

" 'The best wishes of the College, especially the class of 1905, his last physics class at Dartmouth, go out to Professor Nichols in his new field of labor'.

"His investigations and discoveries have brought him many distinctions, among which are the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and membership in the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Science. He is on the council of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he has also been vice president. He is a member of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society, and is on the editorial board of the Astrophysical Journal. In 1907 he was made Research Associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in relation to the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory, a position which he still holds in connection with his professorship at Columbia.

"The year 1904-05 Dr. Nichols spent in Cambridge, England, and lectured both at the Royal Institution in London and the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University. On his return from Cambridge he was made, for two years in succession, Ernest Kempton Adams Research Fellow of Columbia University, in addition to the duties of his professorship. His rare gifts, both as teacher and investigator, place him in the foremost rank of teachers and productive scholars in his chosen field, in Europe as well as in America.

"The new president of Dartmouth belongs to the most useful class of broad-minded scholars whose interests are not confined by the boundaries of any one field of thought or activity, but extend over all fundamental problems of human concern. By observation, for which he has had the amplest opportunity, he is familiar with the broadest educational problems, not only of his own country, but also those of England and Germany. In Columbia, his ability in administration and his grasp of educational policies have reached the fullest recognition, in his appointment as the administrative head of one of the University's largest and most important departments, and in his assignment to a seat in the University Council, and to membership in the faculty of Columbia College as well as in the graduate faculty of Pure Science.

"Professor Nichols' record is one of high efficiency in his chosen field, that of science, but his election to the presidency of Dartmouth College has peculiar fitness because of his sympathy with and appreciation of classical learning. Moreover he knows intimately the time honored traditions of Dartmouth in its relationship to classical education, and this department of the curriculum will preserve under his administration the same importance that has always been so marked in the New England colleges.

"Dr. Nichols in 1894 married Katherine Williams West of Hamilton, New York. They have one child, a daughter.

"The president-elect has always maintained a live and active interest in Dartmouth. He is familiar with its;'spirit' and in sympathy with its history and policies. He is a 'Dartmouth man' in every substantial definition of the term, and his election will commend itself to the educational world at large and the graduates of Dartmouth alike.''

President Tucker, in a statement given to The Dartmouth, said:

"As there is no immediate opportunity of presenting Doctor Nichols to the undergraduates, allow me to give a word of introduction through your columns. Doctor Nichols belongs to our fellowship by the right of five years of brilliant service in the chair of physics, a service recognized by the trustees by the honorary degree of Doctor of Science. But he is much more closely one of us by his sympathies. I have never attended a dinner of Dartmouth men in New York at which he was not present. He comes back to us as he left us, his heart unchanged. He returns with a reputation which has been increasing year by year at home and abroad. Few scholars in any department have gained the position he holds as a man of forty. It is also his distinction that he has won his place in a department crowded with workers intent on research. The change which he makes to administration does not require of him the sacrifice or repression of powers which have given him success. Doctor Nichols is essentially a man of imagination. He sees things that are to be, as well as things that are. For this reason I anticipate from him as brilliant a service in administration as he has rendered in research or instruction. I anticipate no less that through his personality, he will establish himself at once in the hearts of undergraduates and graduates of the College."