16 FEBRUARY 1918, Page 3

Sir Joseph John Thomson, the great physicist, has been appointed

by the King to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in succession to the late Dr. Montagu Butler. The new Master, who is President of the Royal Society, is admirably qualified by his high scientific attainments and by his knowledge of men to maintain the great traditions of the Lodge at Trinity. Five Heads of Houses at Cam- bridge are now men of science. But the Cambridge Colleges never gave an exclusive preference to classics and theology in their choice of Fellows, and there is nothing exceptional in the appointment of a distinguished man of science as Master of Trinity. The first observatory in Cambridge was erected above the great gate at Trinity in Bentley's day.