14 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 



cal science in our own time to realize this fact. The developments of 

 heat engines, photography, electricity, telephony, telegraphy, etc., 

 familiar to ever>'body, afford sufficient justification if any is needed 

 from the utilitarian point of view, for the promotion of physical re- 

 search. But surprising and gratifying as have been these advances, 

 and well worked as have been all of the fields referred to. there is 

 the amplest room for improvement in every one of them and promise 

 of still m.ore important practical developments from investigations 

 in most of them. 



In the past, many capital discoveries and many wide generaliza- 

 tions have been made by isolated workers, mostly college or univer- 

 sity professors, who have pursued research more or less incidentally 

 in connection with their duties of instruction. Often such discoveries 

 have required only meagre instrumental equipment and mediocre 

 intellectual attainments, for the phenomena to be observed lay close 

 at hand. With the advance of science, however, it is becoming con- 

 tinually essential to attack larger and more difficult problems. In 

 general, the more recondite the phenomena to be investigated the 

 more elaborate must be both the instrumental and the intellectual 

 equipment of the investigator ; and the more essential is it that he 

 should devote his entire time and energy, rather than a fraction of 

 them, to his work of research. There are some physical questions, 

 also, like those common to astronomy and geodesj*, which require 

 for their solution the cooperation of a number of experts through a 

 series of years. Such cooperation in the great national and private 

 obserx^atories and in national and international geodetic bureaus has 

 hitherto secured results of immense theoretical and practical impor- 

 tance. Similarly, the Royal Institution of London has been made 

 famous by the researches of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. 



It is clear, then, that there are at the present epoch unlimited op- 

 portunities for physical research; and that we may confidentially 

 expect a rich harvest of results from almost any field diligently cul- 

 tivated by one or more competent investigators. In conformity with 

 this view, your Committee is of opinion that the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion by promoting research in the more refined and difficult prob- 

 lems of physics may not only advance knowledge directly through 

 important resulting discoveries, but may also advance knowledge 

 indirectly by .so distinct a recognition of the value of ahstract 

 investigation. 



