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the patent office as the exceptions to prove the rule. But it is 

 impressive to note how early in lire most or the great ones re- 

 ceived what appear to have been secure academic positions. 

 Lacking adequate controls we cannot say whether or not the 

 greatest contributors obtained professorships at ages distinctly 

 lower than the average, but the data do not support the fre- 

 quently heard remark that Europe traditionally fills her aca- 

 demic chairs with men well past their prime. Nor does the 

 evidence encourage the occasional contention that scientists 

 like prize fighters or ball players do better it they are kept 

 hungry and insecure. Clerk Maxwell was professor at 25; Helm- 

 holtz at 28; Faraday, director of the laboratories of the Royal 

 Institution at 34; Rutherford became professor at 27; Bohr at 

 31; J. J. Thompson was a Fellow of Trinity at 24, and Caven- 

 dish professor at 28. 



Nor is it only in physics that we find this accent on youth. 

 Schwann, the father of the cell theory, was professor at 28; 

 Pasteur, who developed many of Schwann's observations on 

 spontaneous generation into the foundations of microbiology, 

 was professor at 26; Claude Bernard had to wait to be 42 until 

 he could succeed Magendie as professor of medicine, but had 

 previously been given the newly instituted Chair of Phvsiology 

 at the Sorbonne. In any case, his career was unusually delayed 

 by his early hope of becoming a playwright. Willard Gibbs, 

 perhaps the only nineteenth century American to achieve equal 

 renown with the Europeans named above, was made professor 

 at 30. 



Twentieth Century Basic Research 



The progress of science in the twentieth century seems 

 also to be based solidly in institutions. To cite but one index, 

 the overwhelming majority of Nobel prize winners in physics 

 and chemistry were university men. Research institutes con- 



J J 



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