The Nobel Prizes

Americans fare better than their wont in the Nobel awards this year. Prof. Richards, of Harvard, received a deferred 1914 prize tor discoveries in the atomic weight of chemical elements. Thomas A. Edison is bracketed with Nikola Tesla for the 1915 prize in physics.

Until August, 1914, made the great dream of Alfred Nobel, that by inventing dynamite he had helped make war impossible, seem a mockery, 78 prizes had been awarded. None had been given for chemical research to any American, none for literary eminence.

One each in physics and medicine had been voted to Prof. Michelson, of Chicago, and Dr. Alexis Carrel, of the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Two Americans, Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root, had been honored for service to peace.

Of the 1915 awards in literature Romain Rolland is best known for his long study of the soul experiences of the German-born Jean Christopher in Paris, written before the war and having an increased value because of it.

The other names — Hendrick Pontippidan, Troels Lund and Verner von Heidenstam, two Danes and a Swede — will be new to most American readers.