JOURNAL 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. VIII JUNE 4, 1918 No. 11. 



BIOLOGY. — Biology and war.^ Raymond Pearl, U. S. Food 

 Administration. 



Science is playing a part in the conduct of the present world 

 war far beyond anything ever dreamed of as a possibility before 

 its beginning. The physicist and the chemist have been called 

 into consultation with regard to practically every sort of mili- 

 tary activity, both offensive and defensive. They have been 

 asked on the one hand, to devise new mechanisms of destruction, 

 and on the other hand to provide effective means of defense 

 against such measures of annihilation as the enemy has been 

 able to put into operation. The response to these demands has 

 been generous, timely, and effective in all of the countries at war. 

 In view of his contributions in these directions the university 

 professor of physics or chemistry seems in a fair way to attain, 

 when the war is over, a position of respectability and esteem in 

 the world's affairs never before imagined in his wildest dreams. 

 The submarine, the aeroplane, gas warfare, as indeed practically 

 all of the new fighting methods which have been put into opera- 

 tion in the last few years, are highly recondite developments of 

 physical science, using the term in a broad sense to include 

 chemistry, mathematics, and even astronomy, as was pointed out 

 to the Academy in an earlier lecture in this series by Doctor Hale. 



One has heard very little about the immediate help rendered 

 by biology in the conduct of the war, except in relation to the 



^ A lecture given before the Washington Academy of Sciences on May 9, 1918. 



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