NEXT PRESIDENT

OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION

SIR G. THOMSON

From Our Special Correspondent

YORK. SEPr. 2

The Princess Royal attended the opening ceremony of the 121st annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science here to-night, when Sir James Gray, F.R.S., delivered the inaugural presidential address. His subject was " The Proper Study of Mankind is Man."

Earlier in the day the association's general committee unanimously elected

Sir George Thomson, F.R.S., Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as president of the British Association for 1960. when they will meet in Cardiff from August 31 to September 7. Sir George Thomson, who is at present in South Africa, wllU assume office as president on January 1, 1960,

Sir George Thomson.

when he will be installed at a general assembly in London.

Sir George Thomson is a Nobel Prize winner who played a big part in the discovery of the electron. In 1940 he was chairman of the British committee set up to investigate the possibilities of atomic bombs; that committee reported the following year that a bomb was possible.

NUCLEAR POWER

After the war, at Imperial College, London, he became interested in the possibilities of nuclear power from deuterium (heavy hydrogen); later, because of the requirements of secrecy, the work was transferred to the Associated Electrical Industries research laboratories at Aldermaston. where he continued to act as consultant.

Acceptance of an invitation from the City of Norwich to hold the 1961 meeting of the association there was unanimously recommended in the report of the general counciL They also reported having received a joint invitation from the city and the University of Manchester to hold the annual meeting in Manchester in 1962 or 1963. The invitation had been provisionally accepted for 1962 and the council unanimously recommended that acceptance be confirmed.

The first and second appeals to industry for funds to launch the association's new activities were stated to have produced a total of £167,000. The second appeal had raised about £102,000.

Sir George Allen, secretary of the association, is confined to bed at his York hotel. Mr. R. A. Stevens, the assistant secretary, said that Sir George Allen suffered periodically from a leg ailment which was a consequence of his days in a Japanese prison camp.

President's address, page 11.