CHAPTER IX 



AN EXPERIMENTER WHO IS HIS OWN RABBIT 



J. B. S. Haldane and his Adventures 



SAYS Mr Haldane : 

 When I was about twelve my father was very interested 

 in diving. There was some talk at the time of the dangers 

 of going down to any considerable depth, dangers which my 

 father pooh-poohed. He said that any healthy boy could go 

 down to forty feet, and he proceeded to try the experiment 

 with me. My only training for this experience was a short 

 sojourn in a compressed-air chamber, which taught me the 

 necessity of ' swallowing ' when pressure increased. If you do 

 not do this you get a pressure on the ear drums which causes a 

 most disagreeable crackling. Next day I was put into a diving 

 suit and sent down to a depth of forty feet, where I stayed for 

 half an hour. 



It was not altogether a pleasant experience, for the dress was 

 too small and leaked horribly, and by the time I was pulled up 

 I was wet to the neck and most bitterly cold. 



Of all the scientists who have been good enough to 

 grant interviews to the authors of this book, none began 

 his scientific career at an earlier age than J. B. S. Haldane, 

 for his father, the famous author of Mechanism, Life, and 

 Personality, began to use his son for certain harmless 

 experiments at the early age of four, and when the boy 

 was no more than eight he was already taking notes for 

 his father in the laboratory. At nine he went down coal- 

 mines, for his father at the time was Director of the 

 Doncaster Coal Owners' Research Laboratory. This was 

 dangerous work, sometimes done under rotten roofs and 

 in bad air and with one eye fixed on a canary in a cage, 



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