Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton, Director of the Bureau of Standards in Washington, has been elected president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Stratton has been connected with the Bureau of Standards for the past twenty-five years, and it is due to his scientific ability and skill as an organizer that it has grown from next to nothing into a great organization of world importance.

Dr. Stratton is a graduate of Chicago University, where he afterwards became a member of the faculty in the department of physics. He is sixty-one years old with a long record as an educator and organizer behind him. He will succeed Dr. Richard C. Maclaurin, who died in January, 1920. Dr. Ernest Fox Nicholls was appointed to succeed him, but was unable to serve on account of illness. Dr. Stratton will take office on January 1, 1923.

In his opening message to the undergraduates of Technology he said that no educational institution in the country turns out better trained men than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Speaking of student activities he said:

"I am in hearty sympathy with student activities. I have heard of the admirable way in which Technology undergraduates conduct their athletic teams, publications, etc., and I am in hearty sympathy with a healthy participation in them for recreation. A man who studies and does nothing else in his college career is missing a portion of his education, which, it seems to me, is vital to his success in later life.

"I look forward with great pleasure to that phase of the presidency which will bring me in touch with Tech men in their play as well as their scholastic work. I do not want to be in touch with undergraduates only through their scholastic work."