Presidential Address. xxix 



after which he was offered a very lucrative post as director of research in 

 one of the most important of the German aniline-dye factories. This offer 

 he refused, preferring the small salary of a university professor and the 

 control of a school of scientific research. It is interesting to note that 

 researches on coal-tar colours no longer occupied his attention, but that 

 the remainder of his life was chiefly devoted to the study of substances 

 playing an important part in animal and vegetable physiological processes. 

 His next achievement was the placing of the uric-acid group upon a satis- 

 factory basis ; for, though uric acid had been discovered so long ago as 

 1770 by the great Swedish chemist Scheele, the number of its later-prepared 

 derivatives being legion, and though many facts concerning the group were 

 known, the key had yet to be found before the relationship between these 

 substances could be understood. From uric acid Fischer passed to the 

 sugar group, then to the proteins, and lastly to the tannins. The story 

 was the same in each case. These four groups are of immense importance 

 in the chemistry of the plant and animal kingdoms. In each case con- 

 fusion reigned supreme before the group was investigated and brought 

 into an orderlv system bv the great investigator. No one could accuse 

 Fischer of the degradation of chemical research by turning his great talents 

 to mere commercial problems ; and yet I do not think I have ever met 

 a man who more acutely realized the value of technical research for the 

 people. He was always sympathetic with the manufacturer, and large 

 numbers of his students found occupation as research chemists in the great 

 chemical factories of the world. During the war his energies were naturally 

 largely devoted to war problems. He warned the Westphalian manu- 

 facturers of the inefficiency of the steps they were taking in the matter of 

 nitrogenous products for high explosives, and was rebuffed by the military 

 authorities. At his instigation a Food Commission was established in Ger- 

 many, and he fearlessly warned the authorities that military victory was 

 of less importance than the health of the people, which could not be main- 

 tained with the inadequate food-supplies. I instance Fischer because he 

 was the greatest organic chemist of his age, but all other great investigators 

 whom I have known have shown a similar attitude towards the technical 

 applications of science. 



My own opinion is that it is impossible to differentiate sharply between 

 pure and applied science. He who works out the life-history of a minute 

 insect or obscure plant is adding to our store of entomological or botanical 

 knowledge. He may, however, be throwing light, though unwittingly, 

 upon some great agricultural problem. Are we to consider that the science 

 is " pure " if no immediate economic result follows, and " applied " if our 

 discovery turns out to be of economic importance ? Michael Faraday can- 

 not have conceived of the technical importance of his investigations when he 

 succeeded in the liquefying of gases, or when he discovered benzene, or when 

 he enunciated the laws of electrolysis, or even when he discovered the 

 remarkable phenomena of electro-magnetic induction. Yet upon each of 

 these discoveries not one but many great industries have been founded. 



Training in the methods of pure science is regarded by many eminent 

 technologists as the best foundation for technical practice. I would remind 

 you that the detection of the German guns on the western front, and 

 their accurate location before the great advance of 1918, was due to the 

 application of his electrical knowledge by a young Cambridge graduate 

 of Australian birth, whose research work up to the time of the war was of 

 a strictly scientific character. 



