Dr. Robert Simpson Woodward, who presided over the New York meeting of the Association, is professor of mechanics and mathematical physics and dean of the Faculty of Pure Science in Columbia University. He was born at Rochester, Oakland County, Michigan, July 21, 1849, and spent his early life on a farm with the exception of about two years of experience in mercantile and manufacturing pursuits. He was prepared for college at the Rochester Academy, entered the University of Michigan in 1868, and was graduated in 1872 with the degree of C. E. Twenty years later the same institution conferred upon him the degree of Ph. D. While yet an undergraduate he entered the U. S. Lake Survey, and immediately after graduation he was appointed assistant engineer in that service. He was employed in the astronomical and geodetic work of the Lake Survey until its completion in 1882. He then accepted the position of assistant astronomer to the U. S. Transit of Venus Commission and accompanied the expedition of Prof. Asaph Hall, U. S. N., to San Antonio, Tex., to observe the transit of December, 1882. He remained with the Transit of Venus Commission until 1884, when he resigned in order to take the position of astronomer in the U. S. Geological Survey. After four years of service in this bureau he resigned to accept the position of assistant in the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. This he held until 1893, when he retired from the public service and accepted the call of Columbia University to the chair of mechanics. In 1895, and again in 1900, he was elected to the deanship of the graduate faculty of pure science in that institution. Professor Woodward has published many papers on subjects in astronomy, geodesy, mathematics and mechanics. He edited, and contributed several chapters to the final report of the U. S. Lake Survey, a volume of about one thousand quarto pages devoted chiefly to a discussion of the geodetic work of the Survey done during the forty years of its existence. He is the author of several of the Bulletins of the U. S. Geological Survey, and of a memoir on the Iced Bar and Long Tape Base Apparatus of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. These forms of apparatus, devised and perfected by him, involve many novel features and secure a much higher precision at a much smaller cost than apparatus previously used. He prepared for the Smithsonian Institution a volume entitled ‘Geographical Tables,’ being a manual for astronomers, geographers, engineers and cartographers, published in 1894. Several of his most important mathematical papers relate to geophysics, especially those bearing on the secular cooling and cubical contraction of the earth, on the form and position of the sea surface, and on the profoundly difficult problem presented by the recently discovered phenomenon of the variation of terrestrial latitudes. Although most of his publications are necessarily of a highly technical