Gifted Students

Columbia University’s Science Honors Program, which offers Saturday science courses to gifted high‐school students, has received a grant of $76 460 from the National Science Foundation for the continuation of its work during the next academic year. Under the program, three hundred high‐school students study in the University’s classrooms every Saturday from September through May. They are given an opportunity to do creative work at an advanced level in such fields as astrophysics, solid‐state physics, computer mathematics, surface chemistry, stoichiometry, population genetics, etc., and according to the director of the program, Assistant Dean Donald Barr of the Columbia School of Engineering, teams of students have been engaged in such projects as building and experimenting with a Stern‐Gerlach molecular‐beam apparatus, constructing an electron microscope, and building an instrumented research rocket. One of last year’s students, now a high‐school senior, has his own grant from the US Public Health Service for original biochemical research.