Astronomical Society

The new president of the American Astronomical Society for the next two years, and the first Canadian astronomer to hold that office, is Carlyle S. Beals of the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa, who succeeded the previous president, Lyman Spitzer, Jr., of Princeton University, following the Society’s annual meeting last year. He received his doctorate from the University of London in 1926, and became a member of the staff of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory at Victoria in the following year. He remained at the Observatory until 1946, when he went to Ottawa, and in 1947 he was appointed to the post of Dominion Astronomer in charge of all federal astronomical and geophysical work in terrestrial magnetism, seismology, and gravity in Canada. He is known for his research in observational astrophysics, particularly in connection with studies of interstellar matter and the emission spectra of Wolf‐Rayet and P Cygni stars, and he has also made contributions in the field of color temperatures and in photoelectric photometry. During the past ten years he has carried out studies having to do with the occurrence of ancient meteorite craters in Canada.