Day of a Scientist 155 



which passed on such matters for the Surgeon General had 

 recently been rather sticky about insisting on a clear de- 

 scription of exactly the problems for which the apparatus 

 would be used. Along with a lot of other people, BiU 

 thought this was ridiculous in the case of a general-purpose 

 apparatus like a Spinco analytic and had said so. Fortu- 

 nately, he had a couple of good friends on the Study Section 

 who felt the same way. One of them had three Spincos in 

 his own lab — all bought with government money — and he 

 certainly couldn't have described specific problems for even 

 one of the three, much less have seen to it that they were 

 used only for these purposes after they were obtained. But 

 the Study Section wouldn't meet for another couple of 

 months, and there would be additional delays while Con- 

 gress debated how much the NIH should get next year and 

 while the application traveled on up from Study Section 

 through the Council to the Surgeon General's office. Even 

 with the best of luck it would take at least a year before a 

 new centrifuge could be installed and working. In the mean- 

 time, he would have to replace May with somebody who 

 would throw his weight around a bit more. 



In any case. May had had the headache long enough and 

 deserved to have some more free time to do his own re- 

 search. Having decided this. Bill turned his attention back 

 to his own problem. Apparently, he had been thinking 

 about it subconsciously as he mulled over his administrative 

 difficulties, for it occurred to him as he was tying his tie 

 that he had better abandon any further attempt to extract 

 the Hpoid from the protein with organic solvents and try 

 adsorbing out the protein on a special cellulose column he 

 had just read about in Nature, He could start his technician 

 reading up on the technique and get his secretary to order 

 the necessary stuff as soon as he got to the lab. 



By the time he got to the kitchen, the coffee was well 



