In addition to being an expert in astronomical photography Professor Draper was a fine analytical chemist, and in addition to his work as professor of physiology, for several years he taught analytical chemistry in the University. During the last few years of his life he was very much interested in the subject of electricity, and gave much time and study to the problem of overcoming the difficulties of adapting the electric light to practical use, and contributed much valuable information on this point.
Although so enthusiastically devoted to the interests of science, Professor Draper was not a recluse, but was of a fine social turn. He was a fluent talker, an entertaining companion and a genial host. When the first symptoms of his fatal illness came upon him he was engaged in entertaining at dinner, in his hospitable home on Madison avenue, New York, the members of the National Academy of Science. He died in the prime of his years and in the fulness of his mental strength. The country can ill-afford to lose men of such mental ability and so enthusiastically devoted to scientific research.
Rising in interest and importance above every other phase of the “woman question,” is that of her education, her higher education, and from this the question of co-education. The first cause which has associated the idea of co-education with the higher education of women, has been the fact that higher educational facilities are, with very few exceptions, limited to the colleges and universities established for the education of men. If woman is to receive higher education it is apparent at the start that the institutions called woman’s colleges and seminaries are inadequate to the work. Hence, whatever other considerations may enter into the co-education problem, this much is clear: if women now, or at any time in the near future, are to have these facilities they must come by some system of co-education, as only institutions now existing for men can furnish them. This suggests the economic and time element of the question. Colleges and universities of ability to do the work of higher education are not born in a day. The best representatives of such institutions in this country and in England are the growth of centuries, and their cabinets, laboratories, museums, libraries, and endowments the results of weary, slow accumulations.