62 SCIENTIST 



have already seen, for example, that many early scientists 

 were employed as engineers or physicians or even as astrol- 

 ogers and alchemists. Pasteur was a great theoretician as 

 well as a man of intense practical interests who spent much 

 time saving the silkworm industry in southern France and 

 in trying to make French beer better than German beer — 

 perhaps his only real failure. 



Today our rapidly growing technology demands the clos- 

 est sort of cooperation between scientists and engineers 

 simply because the existing state of the art is not sufficient 

 to allow us to build new devices, the need for which is 

 clearly defined. For example, the engineer who is asked to 

 design a spacecraft cannot rely wholly on well recognized 

 methods and materials. The stresses involved in space navi- 

 gation, especially the high temperatures generated by ffight 

 at high speeds, demand the development of new materials 

 which, in turn, demands new knowledge of the molecular 

 structure of metals and ceramics. So-called basic research 

 is thus keyed directly into the engineering process. Even 

 if the engineer doesn't do the basic research himself, he 

 must adopt a much more flexible attitude toward conven- 

 tional wisdom and new knowledge than he was trained to 

 have in the past. 



Recognition of these facts is leading many of our better 

 engineering schools to revise their curricula so as to de- 

 crease the dependence on more or less brute memorization 

 of engineering rules and regulations and to increase the 

 emphasis on methods for uncovering new knowledge. Inso- 

 far as graduate training is concerned, this movement began 

 over thirty years ago and is now well advanced in such 

 institutions as Cal Tech and M.I.T. Indeed, the pure science 

 departments in the graduate schools associated with the best 

 engineering schools are fully comparable with those in the 

 best universities. However, only in the last few years has 



