Instead of being a mere nine days' wonder, the Einstein theories held their place in the public mind. The more serious periodicals devoted space to them. First and last, a very notable group of scientific men attempted to explain to the general reader the scope and content of Einstein's system. These efforts, well considered as they were, could be no more than partially successful on account of the very radical character of the revisions which the relativity doctrine demands in our fundamental concepts. Such revisions cannot be made in a day; the average person has not the viewpoint of the mathematician which permits a sudden and complete exchange of one set of fundamentals for another. But the whole subject had caught the popular attention so strongly, that even complete initial failure to discover what it was all about did not discourage the general reader from pursuing the matter with determination to come to some understanding of what had happened to Newton and Newtonian mechanics. THE DONOR AND THE PRIZE In May, 1920, Mr. Eugene Higgins, an American citizen long resident in Paris, a liberal patron of the arts and sciences, and a lifelong friend of the Scientific American and its proprietors, suggested that the success of the Fourth Dimension Prize Contest of 1910 had been so great that it might be desirable to offer another prize in similar fashion for the best popular essay on the Einstein theories. He stated that if in the opinion of the Scientific American these theories were of sufficient importance, and the probability of getting a good number of meritorious essays were sufficiently great, and the public need and desire for enlightenment were sufficiently present, he would feel inclined to offer such a prize, leaving the conduct of the contest to the Scientific American as in the former event. It was the judgment of the editors of the Scientific American that all these provisos should be met with an affirmative, and that Mr. Higgins accordingly could with propriety be encouraged to offer the prize.