104 SCIENTIST 



aged to look for opportunities to work after school and 

 during vacations in whatever research laboratories may be 

 available nearby. Individual scientists vary a great deal 

 in their willingness to initiate young people into the scien- 

 tific way of Ufe, but some, at least, are very eager to help. 

 I know of one laboratory in New York, for example, which 

 regularly offers opportunities to high school students to 

 work on advanced problems of biological research over 

 weekends and during vacations. Several of them have had 

 the satisfaction of seeing their names on scientific papers 

 before they entered college. More often, the student will 

 have to begin at the humble level of glassware washer 

 or animal attendant, but if he shows himself interested 

 and reliable, he may quickly graduate to the status of 

 technical assistant and begin learning basic experimental 

 techniques. In any case, he should profit from the atmos- 

 phere of a laboratory where actual creative work is going 

 on, an atmosphere very difficult to approach in most teach- 

 ing laboratories in secondary schools. 



Last but not least, some mention should be made of 

 outside reading. One's science teachers and the high school 

 librarian will in most cases be glad to guide the student 

 to books which will enlarge his grasp of science itself and 

 improve his understanding of what it is like to be a scien- 

 tist. For example, a set of excellent monographs on par- 

 ticular aspects of physics is being made available in con- 

 nection with the PSSC physics course. Some classical 

 works of science can be read in their original form by 

 advanced high school students and fortunately the best of 

 them are often available in paperbook form. Darwin's 

 Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle and On the Origin 

 of Species by Means of Natural Selection have served as 

 an introduction to biology for many people for just over 

 100 years. William Harvey's description of the circulation 



