"As to relativity, I must confess that I would rather have a subject in which there would be a half dozen members of the Academy competent enough to understand at least a few words of what the speakers were saying if we had a symposium upon it. I pray to God that the progress of science will send relativity to some region of space beyond the fourth dimension, from whence it may never return to plague us."

Letter of C.G. Abbot (Home Secretary of the National Academy of Science) to G.E. Hale (Director of Mount Wilson Observatory), 20 January 1920

The topic finally chosen for that year's symposium was whether the "spiral nebulae" where nearby objects in our galaxy or external island universes. Edwin Hubble settled the issue once and for all just a few years later.